
I 




m^ 



THE 



Giddy Gusher Papers 



BY 



MARY H. FISKE 



EDITED BY HARRISON GREY FISKE 




NEW YORK 

THE NEW YORK DRAMATIC MIRROR 

145 Fifth Avenue 

1889 






Copyright, 1889, 
By HARRISON GREY FISKE 



Press of J. J. Little & Co., 

Astor Place, New York. 



" Mary Fiske was like herself. She patterned after 
none. She was a genius, and put her soul into everything 
she did and wrote. She cared nothi?ig for roads, nothing 
for beaten paths, nothing for the footsteps of others. She 
went across the fields, and through the woods, and by the 
winding streams, and down the vales, or over crags, wher- 
ever fancy led. She wrote lines that leaped with laughter, 
and words that were wet with tears. She gave us quaint 
thoughts and sayings filled with the 'pert and nimble spirit 
of mirth. 1 Her pages were flecked with sunshine and 
shadow, and hi every word were the pulse and breath of 
life. Within her brain was the divine fire called genius, 
and in her heart the ' touch of nature that makes the whole 
world kin.' She wrote as a stream runs, that winds and 
babbles through the shadowy fields, that falls in foam of 
flight and haste, and, laughing, joins the sea:' — Robert 
G. Ingersoll. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The products of Mary Fiske's fertile brain found their 
way into the world through the medium of the press. 
The preservation in permanent form of at least a portion 
of her writings is no more than a deserved tribute to her 
genius and her memory. 

The sketches presented in this book have been selected 
from the four hundred articles contributed to the col- 
umns of the Dramatic Mirror by Mrs. Fiske during the 
eight years that she was a member of its staff. The 
sole difficulty encountered by the Editor in making this 
compilation lay in the perplexities of choosing from so 
large and rich a store of material. The endeavor has 
been to include, within the space available, that which 
seemed most characteristic and representative of the 
gifted journalist's thought and style. 

As " The Giddy Gusher," Mrs. Fiske was known and 
loved by thousands — not only of the members of the the- 
atrical profession whom she especially addressed, and to 
whose chivalrous championship her generous pen was 
constantly devoted, but also a multitude that sought her 
articles with a zest born of wholesome admiration for the 
striking originality and amazing versatility of the writer. 
Her strong personality unmistakably impressed itself on 
every line she wrote, and this brought her into a familiar 
and delightful intimacy with her readers. 

As a humorist, Mary Fiske was irresistible. Her pathos 
touched a universal chord of human sympathy. Her 



VI INTRODUCTORY. 

eloquence, wit, and imaginative variety were inexhausti- 
ble. She cherished an honest hatred for all forms of 
sham. The conventional was contemptible to her free, 
unfettered nature. Her peculiar genius for expression 
defied the foot-rule of literary criticism. It was sui 
generis. She wrote in her own way, and it was a way 
that appealed to heart and fancy. 

H. G. F. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A Tribute of Song i 

Agricultural Experiences 6 

The Hospital Over the Way 10 

A Suicide 14 

An Anatomical Discovery 1 S 

Sundry Grave Subjects 21 

Bottled Extract of Soul 26 

Theatrical Farmers and Sailors 33 

The Fortune Tellers. . . 40 

Unforgotten ' ' Paulines " 47 

Some Public Nuisances 52 

A Prison Incident 56 

Ye Chewers of Gum 61 

The Sad Story of Charlotte Elizabeth 64 

Mrs. Pratt's Equestrian Exploit 67 

A Religious Watering-place £9 

Delights of the Country 71 

Popular Superstitions 76 

Some Awful Mothers ... S2 

" Baby " Literature 87 

The Watchman's Ghost 91 

The Drug Craze 95 

The Story Told by the Cactus 10 r 

Ouida 107 

Life in a Flat 112 

Prevalent Perfumes 117 



Vlll CONTENTS* 

PAGE 

Down East. 122 

At the Industrial Exhibition 125 

A Real Home for the Aged 131 

The Plan of the Boomerang 136 

A Study of Bald Heads 140 

The Green Paper Box 146 

Asa Farwell's Cherry 150 

The Inequality of the Sexes 153 

A Railway Acquaintance 158 

Blessed are the Hard of Heart 163 

The Baby 166 

About Infants' Nurses 169 

Dreams 175 

Decorative Art 181 

The Sergeant's Story 184 

First Love 190 

About Dogs 195 

The Best Time to Die 203 

A Specimen Boarding-House 208 

Our Professors of Dramatic Art 212 

The Horrors of Moving 219 

A Recollection of Childhood 222 

An Ingersoll Lecture 224 

Fragments , 227 

" Tiger Lily's" Race 234 



The Giddy Gusher Papers. 



A TRIBUTE OF SONG. 



There is no place on earth where man's utter help- 
lessness comes out so strongly, where the ceremonies in 
human use fall so powerless before the majesty of the 
occasion, as at a funeral. It need not be that one's heart 
shall be interested. The obsequies of a stranger, con- 
ducted with all the pomp and vanity of church and state, 
with the melancholy rolling drum of the military funeral, 
or the gorgeousness of the Masonic regalia apron — all 
are alike inadequate and unavailing. 

But once in my life have I witnessed a ceremony that 
was as grand and impressive as the silent, awful occasion 
of it. 

I will tell you of a funeral which lingers in my memory 
as the grandest, most solemn and befitting ceremony that 
was ever given to the dead. 

It was many years ago that a poor, widowed woman, 
leading a hard life of unending labor, was called to part 
with the one thing dear to her — her only child. Mother 
and daughter had toiled together for fifteen years, and 
the only bit of sunshine falling into their dark lives was 
that shed by their loving companionship. But the girl 
had been always sickly. Under the heart-broken mother's 
eyes she faded and wasted away with consumption, and 



2 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

at last the day came when the wan face failed to answer 
with its ghastly smile the anxious, tear-blinded eyes of 
the mother. 

The poor young creature was dead. For many months 
the pair had been supported by the elder woman's sew- 
ing, and it was in the character of employer I had 
become acquainted with Mrs. Cramp and her story. By 
an occasional visit to the awful heights of an East-side 
tenement where they lived, by a few books and with 
some comforting words, I had won the love of the dying 
girl. Her grateful thoughts turned in her last hours to 
the small number of friends she possessed, and she 
besought her mother to notify me of the day of her 
funeral and ask me to attend. 

That summons reached me upon one of the wildest 
days preceding Christmas. A sleet that was not rain, 
and a rain that was not snow, came pelting from all 
points of the compass. A wind that wailed in the chim- 
ney and howled in the street told how truly dreadful for 
out-door purposes was the weather of the day. I piled 
the glowing grates ; I drew closer the curtains and shut 
out the gloom of the December afternoon ; I turned on 
the gas and sat down devoutly thankful that I had cut 
all connection with the wicked weather — when an instal- 
ment of it burst in on me in the shape of Parepa Rosa. 
She was Euphrosyne Parepa at that time, and the opera- 
tic idol of the city. Muffed with tippets — flecked with 
snow — glowing with the short encounter she had had 
with the elements — rushing up the steps from her car- 
riage, she threw herself into an easy chair and proclaimed 
the horrors of the outer world to be beyond description. 

And even as we congratulated ourselves on the pros- 
pect of a delightful day together, there came the sum- 
mons for me to go to the humble funeral of the poor 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 3 

sewing-woman's daughter. I turned the little tear- 
blotted note over and groaned. 

" This is terrible," said I ; " it's just the one errand 
that could take me out to-day ; but I must go." And 
then I told Parepa the circumstances and speculated on 
the length of time I should be gone, and suggested 
means of amusement in my absence. 

" But I shall go with you," said the great, good-hearted 
creature. 

"Your throat, and old Bateman, and your concert to- 
night ! " I pleaded. 

"If I get another i froggy' note in my voice it won't 
matter much ; I'm hoarse as a raven now," she returned. 

So she re-wound her throat with the long white com- 
forter, pulled on her worsted gloves, and off in the storm 
we went together. We climbed flight after flight of nar- 
row, dark stairs to the top floor, where the widow dw T elt 
in a miserable little room not more than a dozen feet 
square. The canvas-back hearse peculiar to the twenty- 
five-dollar funeral stood in the street below, and the 
aw T ful cherry-stained box with its ruffle of glazed white 
muslin stood on uncovered trestles in the centre of the 
room above. 

There was the mother, speechless in her grief, beside 
that box — a group of hard-working, kindly-hearted neigh- 
bors sitting about. It was useless to say the poor woman 
was prepared for the inevitable end — it was cold com- 
fort to speak to her of the daughter's release from pain 
and suffering. The bereft creature in her utter loneli- 
ness was thinking of herself and the awful future — of the 
approaching moment when that box and its precious bur- 
den would be taken away and leave her wholly alone. So, 
therefore, with a sympathizing grasp of the poor worn, 
bony hand, we sat silently down to "attend the funeral." 



4 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

The undertaker's man, with a screw-driver in his hand, 
jumped about in the passage to keep warm. The creaky 
boots of the minister belonging to the twenty-five-dollar 
funeral were heard on the stairs. There was a catarrhal 
conversation held outside between them, as to the enor- 
mity of the weather, and (probably) the bad taste of the 
deceased in selecting such a time to die was discussed. 
Then the minister came in with a pious sniff, and stood 
revealed, a regular Stiggins as to get-up — a dry, self- 
sufficient man, icier than the day, and colder than the 
storm. 

He deposited his hat and black gloves and wet 
umbrella on the poor little bed in the corner ; he slapped 
his hands vigorously together ; he took himself in well- 
merited fashion by the ears and pulled them into glow- 
ing sensation, and after thawing out for a moment, 
plunged into business. 

He rattled merrily through some selected sentences 
from the Bible. He gave us a prayer that sounded like 
peas in a dried bladder, and he came to "Amen " with a 
jerk that brought me up like a patent snaffle. He pulled 
on his old gloves and grabbed his rusty hat, and with his 
umbrella dribbling inky tears over the well-scrubbed 
floor, he offered a set form of condolence to the broken- 
hearted mother. He told her of her sin in rebelling 
against the decrees of Providence. He assured her that 
nothing could bring the dead back. He inveighed 
against the folly of the world in general and this poor 
woman in particular ; and then he made a horrid blun- 
der, and showed he didn't know even the sex of the dead, 
by saying : " He cannot come to you, but you must go to 
him'* 

This was a settler for Parepa and myself. We looked 
at the departing minister in blank astonishment. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 5 

The door swung wide ; we saw the screw-driver wav- 
ing in the air as the undertaker's man held converse with 
the clergyman. A hush fell on everybody gathered in 
the little room. Not one word had been uttered of con- 
solation, of solemn import, or befitting the occasion. It 
was the emptiest, hollowest, most unsatisfactory moment 
I ever remember. 

Then Parepa rose, her cloak falling about her noble 
figure like mourning drapery. She stood beside that 
miserable cherrywood box. She looked a moment on the 
pinched, wasted, ashy face upturned toward her from 
within it. She laid her soft w T hite hand on the discolored 
forehead of the dead girl, and she lifted up that match- 
less voice in the beautiful melody : 

1 ' iVngels ever bright and fair, 
Take, O take her to your care." 

The screw-driver paused in describing an airy circle ; 
the wet umbrella stood pointing down the stairs ; the two 
men with astonished faces were foremost in a crowd that 
instantly filled the passages. The noble voice swelled 
toward Heaven, and if ever the choirs of Paradise paused 
to listen to Earth's music, it was when Parepa sang so 
gloriously beside that poor dead girl. 

No words can describe its effect on those gathered 
there. The sad mourner sank on her knees, and with 
clasped hands and streaming eyes the little band stood 
reverently about her. 

No queen ever w T ent to her grave accompanied by a 
grander ceremony. To this day, Parepa's glorious trib- 
ute of song rings with solemn melody in my memory, as 
the only real, impressive funeral service I ever heard. 



AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCES. 



There is no sort of doubt existing in that thinking- 
machine of mine that Heaven and Destiny intended we 
should scratch round like so many hens and get our living 
off and out of the earth. It's fun from first to last, from 
sowing to harvest. Having lately become a farmer, I 
speak by the schedule on which true happiness is run to 
the best of my information and belief. It was quite the 
fashion a few years ago to ridicule Horace Greeley as an 
agriculturist, and some of the papers are at present 
knocking out a good deal of fun from the exploits of 
Hayes as a poulterer. 

Make no mistake and don't hope to laugh at your 
bucolic Gusher. She has been a success from the hour 
she broke ground in March and began to plant things. 
She didn't put out egg-plants for spring chickens, nor 
plant horse-chestnuts with a wild idea of seeing chestnut 
horses coming up like cabbages ; but she put in a peck 
of tomato seeds in March and they froze or rotted in the 
ground and never showed up in May one single seed. 
But one day, travelling through a down-town street, she 
saw tomato-vines a foot high ; she bought a load of 'em, 
and gave a man a dollar to climb up to her farm as early 
as five next morning, and in the seclusion of the shubbery 
put them out. 

The astonishment of the rest of the country knew no 
bounds, and a coalition was at once formed between your 
astute Gusher and this man, who is as near being a tramp 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 7 

as a man who will do a day's work occasionally can be. 
My ally informs me what seed I shall plant one morning. 
I do it ostentatiously, and put up little pigmy posts, with 
cards neatly lettered stuck on top of 'em. These agri- 
cultural guide-posts inform you that here lie buried ver- 
benas or petunias or gladiola or tuberose bulbs. My 
wicked partner never fails me. As soon as it's light 
enough to read he pulls up a stake ; sees that I have put 
beside it a gladiola bulb ; he selects from his assortment 
one that has made its way in the world, and has a green 
flag ten inches long flying. This he plants, replaces the 
tag beside the flourishing plant, and goes on this way with 
all the rest. The natives gather 'round and tell about 
backward springs and miracles in horticulture' ; ask me 
if I put anything into the ground except the old case- 
knife and the seed they see me sow ; ask me if I have 
always been considered to be like other folks, and if I am 
gifted in any other way beside making things grow. 

In this way I have greatly astonished my innocent 
neighbors, and now I've begun on the rest of the inhabi- 
tants. I find a hen's capacity for amazement is very 
great. My ally, who now works round on the place, said 
one day : " Some o' them hens wants to set." 

I sent him off for new-laid eggs, and in twenty-four 
hours I had several hens on as many nests, and just as 
many eggs under 'em as I could tuck away out o' sight. 
The tramp advised me to buy eggs by the barrel and set 
the hen on the bung-hole. This may have been scarcasm, 
but when an old speckled girl named Hannah came off 
with twenty-three chickens no one knew that I had stolen 
ten from Mrs. Phoebe and Aunty Brown, two noble old 
hens in the barn that belong to the landlord, who is round 
bemoaning to this day that Aunty should have only one 
chick and Miss Phoebe four. Hannah's chickens were 



8 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

about fifteen minutes old when I brought a hatful from 
the barn and let 'em loose beside her in a little coop. I 
threw her in a handful of egg-shells to account for the 
large family, and she never weakened. 

Now, then, a Shanghai named Miranda had been sit- 
ting on thirteen eggs for fourteen days when a little gray 
hen of mine evinced an intention to make a nest. I had 
made omelettes of her incipient family, and felt called on 
to see her through. I took a cigar-box full of eggs to the 
barn, and after a vigorous protest on the part of Miranda, 
got her off the nest long enough to take her thirteen 
warm eggs and substitute thirteen fresh ones. These we 
put in the gray hen's coop and let nature take its course. 
In less than a week my little gray mother-hen came off 
with a dozen chickens, and I tell you a more excited bird 
I never saw. She walked into the bar and sat on the back 
of a chair ten minutes examining the almanac. She knows 
she wasn't on that family as long as she ought to have 
been, and she gathers 'em under her now and tries to sit 
it out. But then I know several mothers w r hose broods 
have grown up, and some of 'em are twenty years of age, 
and the old girls sit on the family to this day. 

But the gray hen is the wonder of the poultry. She took 
her chickens and paraded in front of Miranda, who was 
peacefully sitting on my dozen store-eggs, and the mother 
instinct is strong. She looked at my little stump-tailed 
pullet and the twelve stalwart, long-legged Shanghai 
chickens that stalked beside her, and she routed the 
whole party. 

It's often thought that the world treated people very 
much as they deserved, and the better a person deserved 
the better the world treated 'em. It's precisely the same 
way with hens. A muddy-colored little chicken got its 
leg hurt and went lame, and the whole fleet of hens bore 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 9 

down on her and pecked and maltreated her. The poor 
thing led a horrible life till I caught her and painted her 
head with gold paint, and made eyes like peacock's, with 
iridescent paint all down her sides, and gilded her legs, 
and when she was quite dry I let her loose among her 
former persecutors. The effect was stunning. That 
hen walked into the sun, and she was something daz- 
zling. The unpainted hens were dazed with admiration. 
She has received the unremitting attentions ever since 
of the four roosters belonging to my farm. Duels are 
daily fought on her account and my premises. What 
will happen when the gilding soaks off I can't say ; but 
at present she is the bossess and queen of the coop. 

Yes, the affairs of a poultry-yard are very much like 
the affairs of human beings, and the affairs of a little set- 
tlement are conducted in the same selfish, sacrificing way 
as the affairs of a nation. 

One of the loveliest places to be found is up here, where 
I have pitched my tent and am running the miracle farm. 
It's just near enough to the city to allow my getting all I 
want of it. I can see a new play and leave a theatre at 
eleven o'clock, and in fifteen minutes from the Forty- 
second Street depot stand on the farm, with the odors 
of the green-growing things flooding the air around me, 
the nice, quiet, country stars blinking over me, and the 
great solemn arches of the High Bridge sweeping off 
into darkness, and the pleasant little Harlem River 
rippling beneath them. The night-cry of a bird in the 
maple-tree and the cheerful swearing of a brakeman 
making up a freight-train on the Hudson River road mix 
delightfully together, and I am glad to be alive. 



THE HOSPITAL OVER THE WAY. 



I never fully realized how often the human head got 
broken until my most intimate friend moved down oppo- 
site the New York Hospital. Her husband is by fits the 
most practical and sentimental man in America. You 
take him one day, and the laying of an egg by a careless 
hen fills his soul with anxiety about a future omelette ; 
and you take him the next, and you might saw my poor 
Maria's leg off before his eyes and he wouldn't flinch. 
But in both positions he issues unpleasant opinions, and 
as they struck their new quarters when his heart was 
tender, Maria was frightened by the dread forebodings 
of her Ichabod. 

" Put me at the back of the house," said he. "The 
clang of that ambulance fills me with pain." 

" Why should it," said Maria, " as long as I didn't ring 
for it ? " 

" And the sight of those dreadful walls are hideous, 
enclosing so much human misery," he continued. 

" Moreover, it is built of parti-colored bricks and a 
heap sight more cheerful than the Metropolitan Opera 
House. The misery there is alleviated, which is more 
than I can say for that across the street." And Maria 
got in one on Ichabod. 

Then Maria and I just began to look at the hospital, 
to see if He or She had the right of it. And in its study 
we have found much to interest and more to amuse. 

The early-morning politician with the broken head is 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. II 

one of the funniest features of the season. A coach 
with a few friends drives up at six. At that hour I am 
struggling with Dana on Cleveland or Bennett on Blaine, 
but instantly I take a greater interest in the evidence of 
a great political issue which is being carefully decanted 
from the coach across the way. His coat is torn, his 
necktie is hanging, and the blood so incarnadines his 
face that it's a question if he is a white man or a Fif- 
teenth amendment of one. His friends boost him in 
through the great iron gates and the coach patrols the 
street. After a good hour of this exercise it stops, to 
take on board the repaired article, and here the laugh 
comes in. The doctors have plastered and patched him, 
and put a poultice on the north side of him, and mounted 
a sort of white night-cap on top of all the other white 
fragments, and aloft, on a small embankment where a 
peculiarly big lump occurred, one of the officer's friends 
had perched the sufferer's little black derby hat. You 
talk of funny sights ! That exhibition takes place almost 
every morning, and if your windows were open my howl 
of delight would reach you. 

The other day an ambulance arrived with a stout Irish 
fellow, so thoroughly broken up that they just dished 
him out as if he was picnic chowder. The big iron 
gates had hardly clanged behind him before a stalwart 
Biddy with a stove-lifter braced herself against the rail- 
ing. She had evidently brought her work home herself. 

Several adherents stood at a respectful distance, when 
a jolly-faced man on a milk-cart addressed her : 

" Fwat's the matter, Mrs. Mulcahy ?" 

"They're puttin' a new lid on Mike in beyant." 

" Was it an accident ? " 

" No, it was meself." 

"That was too bad of ye, Mrs. Mulcahy." 



12 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" Arrah, was it indade ? Av yees had seen the red 
head of her, and Mike walkin' it round the Par'ak, ye'd 
a'seen fwat he took his midicine for. It's here I'll land 
him ivery toime I catch him at it." 

Just here the gates creaked a little and a policeman, 
who had ridden in unnoticed on the ambulance, shot out 
and grabbed Mrs. Mulcahy — stove-lifter and all. 

A short, sharp struggle, and down the street with his 
prize walked the copper. Maria and I silently rise and 
shake hands. The hospital has its consolations. 

Now, then, it's nine o'clock, and rattling up to the 
main entrance comes a big, many-seated Park wagon, 
and lifted carefully in are a score or more of white-faced, 
puny little children — some of 'em bandaged, some of 'em 
in splints, some of 'em in strange apparatus for straight- 
ening backs or lifting heads, but all joyful at the expec- 
tation of a ride. 

I wonder it doesn't strike the wealthy woman or the 
married man oftener than it does to do something for 
these magnificent hospitals of ours. Why, for a few dol- 
lars you can have a whole afternoon's solid pleasure. 
Go buy up fifty picture books, and ask permission to 
visit the juvenile ward, and leave one on each little cot. 
Buy a few dollars' worth of worsteds and fancy cottons 
and crochet hooks and feather braids and go through 
the convalescing ranks of the female patients of a hos- 
pital and brighten by your little presents the monoto- 
nous hours of your suffering sisters. It does seem to 
me that we struggle and put out lots of money and 
effort to attain the very miserable returns we call pleas- 
ure, when the truest form of it can be procured so cheaply. 

A careful observation of the habits of man, as dis- 
played at the windows and on the balconies of the hos- 
pital, leads me to believe that taking off a man's head is 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 13 

the only way to take the flirt out of him. On the second 
story there is a ward apparently devoted to the use of 
young men who have been more or less removed. No 
one of 'em seems to have the full complement of arms 
and legs ; but they all flirt. There's a pretty housemaid 
next door who rouses the whole hospital when she washes 
her steps. When she appears with her bucket they all 
appear with their crutches, and one particularly awful 
young man, who is swathed like a mummy and has evi- 
dently been half-way into a sausage-cutter, jumps play- 
fully 'round and waves a red silk handkerchief at the 
divinity with the broom. 

But, then, the ruling passion is hard to eradicate. I 
remember, when a lady friend of mine died a year ago, 
the doctor thought it his duty to break the impending 
change to her, and advise her to make such disposition of 
her property and two unruly children as she could in 
twenty-four hours, that being the limit of the game. She 
telegraphed for a sister, she sent for me, and she did all 
her front hair up on pins. When I reached her at nine 
o'clock, twelve out of her twenty-four hours were gone. 
She gave me the dreadful information and the most sol- 
emn charge to reach the house at twelve next day and 
" take down her crimps " before the undertaker saw her. 
It was plain she meant to make a good impression even 
on that most uninteresting of all men. 



A SUICIDE. 



Some of the greatest lessons the world has ever learned 
have been taught it by pictures, and I heartily wish I 
could duplicate one I saw the other day and hang it on 
the walls of every grinding, thieving manufacturer 
throughout the land. Every one who knows the habits 
of the Gusher knows that though she goes to bed with 
the owl she gets up with the lark. No sleep for her when 
there's daylight outside, and very little for anybody else 
in her volcanic vicinity. Well, it is nice to be up and 
out in the early morning, and especially in the country, 
where I am farming and browsing just at present. Aston- 
ished cows and newly risen roosters view me with sur- 
prise as I go prowling about over the land, and it was 
on one of these excursions that I saw the picture I wish 
I could have had photographed by the hundred for dis- 
semination. 

Just above McComh's Dam rotten bridge, the salt 
water of Harlem River is full of frozen cakes of ice. 
Along the shore it lies piled up in rough, dirty masses, 
and in the morning sun it glinted and gleamed here and 
there bright enough to put into cocktails, or gloomily 
bobbed up and down in the water as dirty and battered 
as property trunks. On some of these soiled and float- 
ing cakes of ice two men were picking their way, as 
Eliza crossed the river in "Uncle Tom," to an object 
jammed in between some of the overlapping layers. 
They bent curiously over it a moment, then lifted and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 15 

bore to the shore between them the body of a drowned 
woman — a mere shadow of a creature, with flat chest and 
narrow shoulders and bowed back, with hair just touched 
with gray, carefully combed and tied and braided on the 
hollow-templed head. Her eyes w 7 ere wide, staring as if 
seeking to see what laid beyond the gate she had opened 
for herself, and a pitiful, pleading expression rested on 
the poor mouth, from which oozed the foam that always 
fills the lips of the drowned. Every article on the wasted 
body was scrupulously clean and carefully put on. 

The rough but kindly men began to speculate on the 
probability of her being some resident of the neighbor- 
hood who had been out in the storm of the night before, 
and slipped off the bridge returning home. But Peter 
Conlon, the captain of the precinct, gave one look at 
the woman, and said : " She is a suicide, and driven to it 
by hard work and despair." 

I wish that face in marble or on canvas could confront 
every ready-made clothing manufacturer in this land. I 
wish that silent but awful prophecy could reach everyone 
of the wretches who fatten on starving needle-women ; 
for just as surely as it told the tale of her misery past 
and her hard life ended, it told of the woe to come, the 
punishment waiting the authors of her misery, when, 
beyond this brutal ruling, that face would be in some 
celestial witness-box. 

In a few hours the story of Minna Huer, the German 
sewing-woman who committed suicide, was known, and I 
shall never forget it, illustrated, as it was, with one dread- 
ful picture. The papers gave it a brief, succinct mention. 
They are agitating — some of them — the question of better 
pay for the starving seamstress, but they failed to see the 
magnificent text furnished them by the life and death of 
this poor woman. 



l6 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

She was a good, pure woman, alone in a strange land ; 
a well-educated person of much refinement. She had 
lived for five years in a narrow garret all by herself, 
cooking her slender stock of food, polishing up her poor 
place till it shone with cleanliness, pulling a needle 
through a piece of cloth from five o'clock every morning 
till midnight, and often begrudging the time she lost in 
carrying her ill-paid work home, and breaking utterly 
down and seeking shelter in death when her hard work 
failed her. 

When a young girl is suddenly faced by disgrace and 
rushes into the other world ; when a woman sees the 
light go out of heaven as some lover's arm drops from 
round her, and ends a life that contains no longer the 
love that sustained it, it's very sad ; but they both have 
had their good time, and the transition from joy to sor- 
row has wrecked 'em. Here was a joyless, sunless life, a 
round of unending toil, and it is very pitiful to picture 
this poor creature tidying up her attic for the last time ; 
putting all in order, knowing that she was never to 
return ; smoothing out the bed on which her weary limbs 
would never rest again ; dusting the little glass in which 
the wan face, going shortly to look into the gates of 
death, should never again be reflected ; writing her last 
sad letter to the brother at home, to whom she desired to 
send her few poor things ; thanking the good woman 
who had given her the teaspoonful of coffee with which 
she made her last earthly meal, and directing that in 
case her body should be cast upon the land once more 
it should be clothed in a nightgown she left in the top 
of the trunk, and which she had "long designed for that 
purpose." 

My God ! Why was not some good Samaritan — some 
Vanderbilt or Gould — on that avenue seeking the poor 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 17 

and needy, when, in the rain and growing darkness, the 
discouraged, despairing seamstress stole up its slippery 
length and plunged into the black, icy water ? Where 
is the justice of Heaven that let that weary, grief-stricken 
spirit pass men whose pockets were bulging with coin 
made from the heart's blood of such poor creatures as 
she, and their mean legs not give way with paralysis or 
their grasping hands not wither w T ith palsy ? 

Oh! Robert Ingersoll, I do hope you are a little out in 
your reckoning, and that there is another town, hard by, 
where some of the wronged citizens of this will find a 
hearing, and some of the tough citizens get a settling; 
for things are not conducted on a pleasing plan here. 
2 



AN ANATOMICAL DISCOVERY. 



I wonder if any savant of the past ever meddled with 
the theory that the reasoning faculties, the affections, the 
ambitions and instincts of man lie in the legs of that ani- 
mal, not in the head ? I do not desire to invade the 
realms of science nor occupy the pants of a professor. 
It would distress me beyond measure to see my name 
printed with Darwin and Tyndall. If I could go off and 
discover that this world was neither round nor flat, but 
built on the plan of a crook-neck squash by imitative 
Nature, I think I should refrain from mentioning it, to 
escape notoriety of a scientific character. 

But it seems as if reasons of a philanthropic kind 
demanded that my present discovery should be divulged. 
I hesitate before flying in the face of accepted, long- 
standing belief. I know I shall meet, as all great 
discoverers have met, opposition and enmity. The per- 
son who upsets a theory that has enjoyed respect and 
consideration for ages treads dangerous ground, and it 
requires great courage and large-heartedness to become 
such an iconoclast. You can therefore take the dimen- 
sions of my courage and get a fair idea of the size of 
my pericardium by the step I boldly take in proclaiming 
that the legs of man, not the head, are the residence of 
his reasoning faculties, the abode of his ambitions, the 
boarding-house of his being. 

With a woman it is different. She is anxious, she has 
a headache ; she is miserable, she grows gray ; she is 
flattered, her head swells. A man's head swells. That 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 19 

proves nothing. It's the stuff he has put in his stomach 
that enlarges his head. You tell a man a funny story. 
What does he do ? Slaps his legs. His risibilities are 
closely allied to his legs. You notice two men talking of 
taking a company on the road. The man with the money 
slowly rubs his legs between the knees and the hips ; the 
man with the play, with every argument, stabs him gently 
in the thick part of his leg (unless the capitalist is a dude 
and has no thick part — then he just picks at the bone). 
Why do they both do this ? Because the moneyed man 
feels that such prudence as he has lies in his legs, and 
the other feels that, if he can poke a full belief of his 
racket into the legs of the hunted animal, his show will 
stand a chance of going out. 

Look at the prominence man instinctively accords his 
legs ! A woman's dwell in comparative obscurity. A 
man's are always on exhibition. In public places they 
are constantly placed higher than his head. This is 
instinct. I am stopping just now at a country hotel, to 
which a garden is attached for restaurant and bar pur- 
poses. A party of men drift in. I make my bets while 
they are in motion. The man with the check legs w T ill 
have his two legs on a table in five minutes. Out come 
the watches and we time him. Nine times out of ten I 
win. Drive up the Boulevards and look at the piazzas 
of the road houses — rows of boot and shoe soles are set 
up on the rails. The men are taking in the spectacle of 
our presence and the speed of fast horses with that por- 
tion of their body capable of most enjoyment — their legs. 
Look down the aisles of a theatre. Every man who has 
an end seat has his legs waving about in the passage. 
The little blower that is provided at the base of an 
orchestra chair to let air in on your spinal column is 
usually occupied by a boot-toe. The foot-rests are 



20 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

enough for a woman, but a man is only prevented from 
putting his feet on top of the back of your seat by the 
presence of the usher. 

I haven't been in a theatre for a year that some man 
didn't walk up my back like a fly or kneel like a camel 
in the desert on the small of my back. Why can't a 
man keep his feet on the ground as well as a woman ? 
Because he's ambitious. His nervous centres, his pro- 
jectile qualities, are in his blamed legs. The size of the 
legs is not regulated by the amount of ability their 
owner possesses in all cases. No one denies the clever- 
ness of Evarts or the humanity of Bergh, and yet a 
Croton bug of ordinary intelligence wouldn't trust him- 
self on four such legs. 

It has long been allowed that the size of the head does 
not show the amount of intellect one possesses. A No. 
23 hat is worn oftener for a season's success, the whiskey 
drank the night before, and hydrocephalus, than for intel- 
ligence or great perceptive faculties. This same state of 
affairs exists in the legs, but not so frequently. We all 
know that the attributes of the head are transmissible 
and contagious. The son has his father's red head and 
his mother's cross eye as an heirloom. 

It was a wise provision that put women's brains in their 
bonnets. If women's affections dwelt in their legs, we 
should be horrified at their deportment. If a woman's 
ambition dwelt in her legs, we should be paralyzed by 
her having them higher than her head, and her No. 2 
Spanish insteps stuck on mantel-pieces and balcony 
rails. Her sense of humor does not lie in her legs, or 
we should be shocked by the spectacle of woman slap- 
ping them every time she heard her husband had caught 
on to a new girl, or some little frequently recurring 
joke like that. 



SUNDRY GRAVE SUBJECTS. 



One of the wisest provisions of an all-wise Providence 
is that for the dead — there is no coming back. Foster 
and Slade to the contrary, the disembodied spirit does 
not revisit the scenes of earth. I should believe in 
future punishment if I were a Spiritualist, for a return to 
familiar scenes would be the worst sort of a hell to any- 
loving soul. 

Being more than ordinarily fond of a very bright 
woman, when my theological views were in a rather cha- 
otic state, we used to discuss early death in a romantic 
fashion, and make terrible vows to each other as to our 
behavior beyond the grave. Why, we two promised 
many years ago that she who first laid down to final rest 
would break the bondage of the grave to know and 
soothe the sorrow in the other's breast. 

And as time rolled on, it came about my dear old 
chum was called to meet the early death we had rather 
courted in our romantic days. God rest her ! I really 
believe, could she come back as she promised, the only 
heart she had ever trusted that remembered her would 
be that of the Giddy Gusher. In three weeks from the 
day of her burial her husband wrote a love-letter to his 
wife's bosom friend. We all remember the loving soul 
in Paradise who importuned the heavenly gate-keeper 
for just one hour on earth in which to comfort the 
broken-hearted lover she had left kicking and pulling 
out his hair on her grave, and, though a thousand years 



22 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

in Hades was the price, she paid it and jumped in on a 
scene to which the tortures awaiting her were as noth- 
ing, for a blond head lay on the shoulder where her bru- 
nette locks were wont to disport, and a big fat girl occu- 
pied the loving arms that had clung to her consumptive 
form. Smiles sat on the lips she had last beheld pale 
with grief. Altogether, it was the worst frost that had 
ever nipped her, and she flew for her thousand years, 
taking to the tortures very kindly after that return to 
earth. 

It's a queer w r orld, taken any way, and human affec- 
tion is not an infringement of Goodyear's patent. I got 
several lessons to that effect quite early in life that I 
shall never forget. There came on a visit to my native 
town a gentleman and wife from a Western city, and the 
man was taken sick with some sort of fever, and after 
quite a lengthy illness, attended by the best doctor (who 
happened to be a good-looking bachelor), the poor hus- 
band died, and was laid out and coffined, and the 
funeral appointed and the mourners gathered. When 
the widow spoke of the family of the deceased and how 
bad they would feel, having no picture of their lost 
relative, some friends suggested a portrait by an eminent 
artist residing among them, and he was sent for in hot 
haste. This was before the days of Daguerre, when the 
fleeting daguerreotype and the flattering photograph were 
unknown, and a portrait after death was accomplished 
from a plaster cast taken from the face of the dead. 

At that time no one was married, hung or buried with- 
out my active superintendence ; naturally, then, I accom- 
panied the artist to the home of mourning and carried 
the pail of plaster of Paris. We were ushered into the 
room where the body lay, and every one retired but our 
two selves. The artist twisted a towel round the han- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 23 

dies of the folding doors separating us from the discon- 
solate widow and her sorrowing friends to secure us from 
interruption, and commenced operations. 

It was a hot summer day ; the sharp, stinging cry of 
the locusts in the trees outside and the stamp of the 
impatient horse attached to the hearse were the only 
sounds that broke the stillness of the sad place. A 
towel was tucked neatly in round the dead man's nice 
white shroud, the rigid features were rapidly brushed 
over with sweet oil, and, to insure the reappearance of 
every wrinkle in the matrix, a spoonful of the heavy plas- 
ter was dashed with much violence into the hollow sur- 
rounding the right eye, and, as it was spatted down with 
the back of the wooden spoon, behold ! we both saw the 
left eyelid twitch. 

The artist, in great excitement, wiped off the plaster 
and tried another spoonful, and we got another wink. 
To come to Hecuba — for it's too long a story — the man 
was alive. I rushed for a doctor, silently and stealthily 
introduced him into our bureau of resuscitation, and in 
twenty minutes the body was looking about in a dazed 
way ; and upon the artist devolved the task of breaking 
the news of the resurrection to the widow. 

There was a crowd of mourners, relations and friends. 
The man, as men go, was an excellent husband, father 
and citizen, and a pleasant person to know. In that 
assembled company I saw consternation — the wildest 
surprise and astonishment, but there wasn't a syllable of 
rejoicing — and the entirely upset expression on the 
resigned widow's face I shall never forget. As I trotted 
home with the unused pail of plaster, the artist and I 
exchanged views. 

"She didn't seem pleased a bit," said I, referring to 
the widow. 



24 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" No wonder. She's not only lost a funeral, but a 
wedding," answered the resurrectionist. " She has been 
engaged to the attendant physician for forty-eight hours, 
to my certain knowledge." 

When you make your mind up to a certain thing and 
expect it, you feel sort of disappointed if it doesn't come 
off — even if it's a funeral, or your own leg. I remember 
when Mrs. Buskin took to her bed with mortal illness, 
she got poor old Sock up nine nights out of seven to 
hear her last words and see her depart in peace. Every 
time she sank most out of sight, and every time she ral- 
lied, and got some solid food about daylight. This 
thing went on for weeks till Sock got sick of it. 

He was great friends with an undertaker in his neigh- 
borhood, and, in a general way, bespoke Mrs. B. 's coffin. 
So one day, after a specially bad night, he dropped in on 
the undertaker, and told him the old lady couldn't live 
through the day, and the man just sent the coffin home 
that afternoon. Sock set it up in the parlor, and dusted 
off the plate, and bought a wreath of immortelles, and 
laid it on the cover, and then brought in Samanthe to 
see the outfit. Instead of being pleased, she nearly 
raised the roof. She went on all day, but every one 
took a sleep that night, and we heard no more of the 
regular midnight leave-taking, and Samanthe Buskin 
goes out with one of the fall companies to play second 
old woman ; and Sock is paying storage for a mahogany 
coffin with a tarnished plate setting forth how Samanthe 
died on August n, 1869. 

The story runs of another lingering case of suffering 
up in Connecticut, when an old lady watched beside a 
husband's deathbed for something like eighteen months. 
There was a ray of hope one day, and a relapse the next, 
till the patient wife was exhausted. The patient had 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 25 

been very weak for several days together, when one 
morning the neighbors went in and found the widow 
quietly weeping. 

"Poor darling!" she sobbed, " he breathed his last 
just as the clock struck four, and Miss Belcher's bantam 
began crowing. " 

" Did he seem to suffer much ? " asked the minister's 
wife. 

" Not close to the last," was the broken answer. 
"About three he had a bad spell of breathing, and I 
took his wind-pipe between my thumb and forefinger 
and pressed it kind of gently, and he went off as easy as 
a lamb." 



BOTTLED EXTRACT OF SOUL. 



The Vienna police have of late been trying to suppress 
a certain doctor who has a theory that Soul is a sort of 
odor that exudes from a person, through the hair princi- 
pally ; that this soul-perfume can be bottled, sold, and so 
used that the desirable attributes of some excellent 
character shall be carried into an unpleasant nature. 
I'm heartily sorry the meddling police have apparently 
cut short this beautiful business. How I should have 
gone into the bottled-soul trick had my worthy doctor 
ever touched New York ! 

I suppose some of the wild and untamed smells I meet 
are escaping souls, and I supposed it was gas till I read 
of my poor doctor's discovery. Whatever were his op- 
portunities in Vienna, here in this city there is an unri- 
valled field for the bottled-soul business. How large a 
demand there would be for the Extract of Sullivan, or 
the Exhalation of Evarts ! Muscle and Erudition — a 
chance for the dudes to build up physically and men- 
tally. 

I took up a big black bottle at home, the other day, 
and my mother said : " Put it down, dear. It's an in- 
fusion of gall and wormwood, and extremely nasty to get 
on your hands." 

"Is it ? " replied I. " Well, I ought to know about it, 
having had some of the chippiest instances of gall on my 
hands lately that I remember to have heard of." 

To begin with, there's my friend Pump. Pump has a 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 27 

fine house on Fifth Avenue and a country-seat in Pequon- 
nock. Pump one day got a note from Gironemo Gall, 
saying that, as Pump's family was in the country, he'd 
like his bay-window for a party of five, to see the Grant 
funeral procession pass. Poor Pump had quite enough 
intimate friends to fill his house, but he is a man w r ho has 
not learned that useful lesson — how to say no. There- 
fore, he wrote Gironemo that he could have a chance at 
the window, although he had a few friends of his own 
who were coming. Directly this got to Gall, that 
worthy sat down and wrote back that, having the win- 
dow assured, he had invited seven more ; his party 
would therefore number thirteen, and they, knowing 
how long the procession would be in passing, would 
bring some lunch. 

Pump's hair rose on his bald head. Lunch eaten by 
thirteen in his magnificent parlors ! What to do the 
poor man didn't know. He took counsel with a lady 
friend, who said the " only thing to do was to send him 
word to bring no lunch, as lunch would be provided." 

According to this advice, poor Pump wrote, and or- 
dered of Pursell an elaborate lunch for twenty-five per- 
sons, and with fear and trembling awaited the develop- 
ments of the funeral morning. 

At nine sharp, Gall and the first instalment arrived ; a 
little later the party numbered thirteen, and then the 
undaunted Gall broke the news gently to his host that 
during the morning his wife's pastor and family, from 
Pequonnock, had come to this city, depending on him 
(Gall) to take them to some suitable spot to view the 
funeral. 

" Of course, I could do no less than share my quarters 
with them," finished Gall, " so I invited them here." 

Pump gasped. In due time the Rev. Mr. Sam Singer, 



28 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Mrs. Sam Singer, and four children under twelve, pulled 
the weary bell of the Pump mansion. Gall threw up an 
embankment of plush chairs and gilded tables on which 
to perch the evangelical kids. He disported himself 
with playful freedom, pulling out a Buhl cabinet and 
sitting on it in the rear of his guests, who were ranged 
in tiers in Pump's bay-window. At two, when the pro- 
cession was under full head, lunch was announced. The 
hungry crowd descended upon the table laid in the 
library at the rear of the drawing-room, and nineteen 
out of the thirty-one would get their hands and mouths 
full, when one of the dozen left on guard would shout : 
" Oh ! here's the Wethersfield Seedling Foot Guard ! " 
and, pate-de-foie-gras, sandwich in hand, the Pequonnock 
detachment would madly rush across the Turkish rugs 
and pile into the window, shedding drops of bloated 
goose-liver in every direction, like sparks from a Cathe- 
rine wheel. 

A slight diversion was caused by little Sam Singer 
falling off the shelf of an etagere, where his doting par- 
ent had put him in company with a Dresden shepherdess. 
Sammy broke his head and the shepherdess both her legs. 

My friend Pump has sent his rugs to the cleaners ; and 
counts his outlay and inconvenience at something like a 
couple of hundred dollars. We exchange experiences 
and vote that the world has taken to a diet of wormwood 
and gall. 

About three months ago a young man said to me: 
" You have the pen of a ready-writer, and I am not 
felicitous in expressing myself. I have met a girl in 
Elmira who is pretty high-toned, very well educated, 
and dreadful sweet on me." 

It was a combination hard to understand, and while I 
pondered how three such conditions could exist together, 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 29 

my fresh friend proposed that I should write his love- 
letters. You know how good-natured your Gusher is. I 
agreed, and the amatory correspondence began. That 
young woman has written three times a week, and I have 
done the same. The letters have glowed with fervid 
heat till I am sure the later ones have melted the wax on 
their backs. 

Mr. Fresh seems to have become imbued with the 
opinion that this is purely my affair, and when I hand him 
his adorer's love-letters, I doubt if he reads them. Yester- 
day he called and wanted to know if I couldn't let her 
down easy — gradually cool off— and finally write her he 
was drowned or hanged, or some little thing like that. I 
hate to. In a great degree I am responsible for this very 
unpleasant state of things. She never saw this wretched 
sham of a lover but once, and the only atonement I can 
think of is to find some solid chunk of a real for true 
man, run him on deck as Mr. Fresh, agree to write all his 
letters when necessary, and abdicate. 

Oh, you talk about gall ! I could give you instances 
by the dozen. 

A captain of one of the English boats had an unruly 
passenger in the steerage, who gave him no end of 
trouble. Finally he got drunk, fell down the companion- 
way, and broke his leg. The captain took up a collec- 
tion, raising a hundred dollars, and gave him a rig of 
clothes besides. The first thing the man did when he 
got on shore was to begin a suit for damages against the 
company and one against the captain for malicious slan- 
der in saying he was as drunk as a beast from Liverpool 
to Sandy Hook 

All this has nothing to do with the transmission of the 
qualities of souls and character discovered by the Ger- 
man doctor. I am not blind to my own deficiencies. 



30 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

There are several qualities I lack. As an arithmeticker 
I am a failure. If only the bottling doctor were here, I'd 
take a case of Ferdinand Ward. His figuring is the style 
to suit me. I lack the quality of " holding " sadly. I 
should take half a case of Ed. Gilmore. He is able to 
hold five aces if occasion requires. I haven't the slightest 
confidence in the honor of English authors or composers, 
and I should try and get a few bottles of Stetson to 
repair that defect. 

In the meantime New York is not so far behind Vienna. 
I went into a drug-store up-town the other day, for some- 
thing to take off sun-burn, as fishing in open boats had 
rendered me a painful spectacle for first-nighters. 

"What you want," said the man, "is our famous Pith." 

I had never heard of it. He assured me it would give 
me an entirely new complexion and make a different 
creature of me. I like change, and I bought a jar as 
quick as a wink. 

Going home, for want of better literature I unrolled a 
prospectus from around the jar, and here it is. I can 
understand how the doctor found customers for his 
bottled-soul business when I find that in intelligent 
New York such statements as the following find believers ; 

The Pith's peculiar effect is traceable to Polaric properties latent 
in the substance. It purifies the skin, neutralizes offensive perspira- 
tion, stimulates the capillaries to healthy action, smoothes wrinkles, 
rounds the form, removes tan, pimples and "worms," moistens the 
most torpid cuticle, and makes pliable the most rigid countenance ; 
finally it exhilarates the mind, clears the mental faculties and allays 
nervousness. 

The last three things were the ones to take my fancy 
— a sort of cold-cream that, daubed on my face, would 
clear my mental faculties and exaltate my mind was just 
the cold-cream for me ; for, you must know, the manner 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 31 

of using this article that acted on the mind, cheered the 
grummet, and pleased the penute was : 

Previous to application wipe the face with a soft sponge moistened 
in warm water. Apply the Pith with both palms and work it well 
in for a few minutes by slow movement of the hands. 

Determined to rid myself of any hitherto undiscovered 
" rigidity of countenance," I rushed home and undid my 
purchase. I found it looked like an ounce and smelled 
like twenty-four ounces of rancid butter. I read with 
horror that 

Its fragrant aroma, which is new and different from any other 
known perfume, is permanent, it being part of the substance itself. 

Thinks I, if I smell like this for any length of time, 
I may as well be buried at once, before friends forsake 
and fortune proves untrue. 

This thought depressed me, and I got down to consider 
and wait for the " exhilaration of mind " promised in the 
prospectus, when I saw a rose-colored sheet of paper that 
had escaped from the jar unperceived. It was a simple 
and touching tale of the discovery of the shrub. I give 
it verbatim : 

Rambling about in the mountain-passes for stray flowers, my 
attention was arrested by a most delicious aroma arising from the 
ground where I stood. The scene around me was wild and rugged, 
and not a flower to be seen. A strange feeling of loneliness crept 
over me, and my heart became agitated with feelings foreign to my 
nature. Recovering my self-possession, I stooped to trace the 
bewitching scent and found myself drawn as by magic to an ugly- 
looking shrub from which I mechanically broke a tw T ig, and lo ! to 
my surprise, the pith of the twig emitted the exquisite fragrance 
which so enchanted me. Elated at this pleasing discovery I hastened 
home, but not until I had selected a few of the larger stems for speci- 
mens, and taken a good survey of the locality so I could iind the 
place again. Making inquiries among the natives about the strange- 
looking plant, I observed an unwillingness on their part to give me 



32 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

any satisfactory information ; one even went so far as to say it was 
poisonous and I had better let it alone. This excited my curiosity 
only the more, and by diligent search I found among the fortune- 
tellers, who abound in the city, one who for a round sum betrayed to 
me the secret. 

This took place in the Indian end of Turkish Persi^ 
I believe. Of course, after the secret was betrayed, the 
rancid butter was easily made, and here you have it, with 
all its pleasant idiocy printed and tied round it with pink 
ribbon. And lots of sensible people buy it and use it. 
Can you doubt the success of the Viennese doctor if he 
ever gets to New York and begins to peddle his bottled 
Extract of Soul ? 



THEATRICAL FARMERS AND SAILORS. 



The actor in the character of farmer or sailor is one of 
the most amusing persons on top of earth. The fad 
doesn't last long, but while it does it consumes all his 
strength and taxes all his vitality. The veriest cockney 
in the whole profes:ion used to be George Clarke — you 
could not get him off Broadway. All the grass he wanted 
to see grew in Union Square. And when his managers 
wished to send him out, he sat down and wept as he 
packed his portmonkey for Philadelphia and Bridgeport, 
bemoaning the fate that exiled him from his beloved city 
haunts and conveyed him to fresh fields and pastures 
full of cows and vocal with frogs. 

Look at him now ! He comes in from a potato patch 
he hoes by the day, with hayseed in his hair — smelling of 
his cow — a horny-handed farmer. He will talk you 
blind on the exciting subject of rutabaga turnips, and his 
eyes dance with enthusiasm while discussing the three 
quarts of oats he's raising in pots on the back stoop. 
Observe the bagginess of his trousers at the knees — that's 
acquired through weeding onions ; take in the slack he 
carries in the rear — that's brought on by sitting on a 
milking-stool. 

I met him the other day with a long thing done up in 
brown paper, and thought by the cut of it it was a Per- 
sian yatagan, and that he was going to play some East- 
ern part. So I expressed myself, and was laughed to 
scorn. Catch him carrying any stupid " prop/' through 
3 



34 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

the street. No, indeed ; he was lugging a new scythe- 
blade, having mowed the old one all to flinders on a 
batch of stones where his hay is growing. Mrs. Clarke 
cut one crop with a pair of scissors, and George got in 
another crop with the family razor ; but he found, after 
all, the proper thing for hay was a scythe, and so he'd 
bought a new one, and was hurrying home to snatch that 
little grass-plot bald-headed before the hens got in and 
snapped it up. 

Then there's Johnny Wild ; he's bought up all the 
land outside Troy, and throws an agricultural look about 
his clothes almost as strongly developed as that pervad- 
ing George Clarke. Madame Ponisi's husband has a 
nice place back in Pennsylvania, where they raise snakes, 
and had a lovely crop last year. 

Dear old Sam Wallace, he thought he would put up a 
larger and more commodious edifice on his place, and last 
spring he began all by himself to build. His home was 
almost ready for plasterers and painters, when one after- 
noon, while hanging a door, he heard a strange, creep- 
ing sound on the stairs. Looking over the railless open- 
ing, there he beheld a huge black snake squirming up, 
and just as the reptile's head appeared on the landing 
the plucky old gentleman gave it an awful knock with a 
chisel. 

Even while this visitor was in the throes of death, he 
happened to look up and beheld hanging over one of the 
unplastered beams of the attic another of the same fam- 
ily. Nothing daunted, Sam seized a saw, and creeping 
up the next flight, he walked across the open beams and 
deliberately sawed the nasty beast in two. Then he 
thought for some time that he had two enemies instead 
of one — the sawed off tail seemed endowed with as much 
intelligence as the head part. It danced round and inves- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 35 

tigated its other end with a detached curiosity unpleas- 
ant to behold. The snake crop has rather daunted 
Madame. Sam got in his snakes early last year, but this 
summer they are going to seed uncut, as the dear couple 
are discouraged about raising anything else on their 
place. 

But if the theatrical farmers are funny, the theatrical 
sailors are something convulsing. Wallack on board his 
yacht was a spectacle to stir their pulses to flights of 
emulation. Robson and Crane have got a yacht, Nat 
Goodwin's got a yacht, and Jack Ryley's got a yacht. 
He calls his the Madeleine, after his wife, but he should 
re-christen her the Rock Hunter, There never was such 
a craft for discovering rocks and splitting on them as the 
Madeleine. A dozen times she has been high and dry 
on them. You feel a bumping and a thumping under 
you as if the bottom of the boat were being filed off, and 
Jack says pleasantly, " She'll get over ; she's taking her 
rocks beautifully to-day." 

I was on this theatrical craft the other day. Jack 
has carefully selected his crew from men who have had 
experience in nautical dramas. We all remember how 
good a Captain in the " Pinafore " troupe John Nash was ; 
he's the sailing-master. Ryley himself was a w r onderful 
Admiral in the same piece, and his maritime intelligence 
lays over the deck. The bo' sun, first mate and loblolly 
boy is well up in sailors' hornpipes, and has played 
William so often that he is very seldom seasick. 

Manned by such a crew, the Madeleine has created a 
wholesome terror in the souls of less experienced yachts- 
men. I never saw such deference shown a small vessel. 
Quite a party boarded her the day I went — the prima 
donna of one company, the soubrette of another, a first 
old woman weighing two hundred pounds, a light come- 



36 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

dian and the gallant Ryley. After adjusting his eye- 
glass, he gave the order to weigh the anchor, and the 
rest of us began to look 'round for the scales to make our- 
selves useful. 

Twenty different sorts of boats were lying about near, 
and as they heard the mandate every one of 'em betrayed 
unusual interest. The light comedian thought he would 
distinguish himself, and he pulled cheerily on the first 
rope handy. Up went our jib, and for the next five min- 
utes the recording angel had both hands full in noting 
down the profanity that filled the air on all sides. The 
Madeleine rounded and swept every deck in the neigh- 
borhood with her jib-boom. She backed and she filled. 
You should have seen the anchors fly out of the water ! 
There was no safety for anybody but in flight — every one 
flew. " That's the way to be treated," said Ryley. 
" They give me the whole thing." The horizon was 
dotted with escaping boats, and away we went rock-hunt- 
ing. Nash spread out a chart of Behring Straits and 
straddled over it in a knowing way, with a pair of divid- 
ers. We were just off the Larchmont Club House, but 
a true, safe sailor looks a long way ahead. 

Rumors had reached me of Ryley's yachting on rocks 
as frequently as on water, so I was not unprepared when, 
in a good stiff breeze, I felt a sudden shock, and we came 
up all standing. 

" It's Gibraltar this time," said the first mate, as he 
rushed below for a map of the coast of Ireland. We 
had a little cannon tied on to our gunwales, and Ryley 
ordered this fired. " It clears the air," he explained, 
and he thought we should lift with the smoke ; and 
we did, going off with a parting scrape, as if loath to 
leave. " I think it would be a good idea to put the 
Madeleine on a dry dock," said the Commodore, " and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 37 

grease her bottom. She seems to stick lately whenever 
she strikes." This motion was carried unanimously. 
We all sang " Larboard Watch" and went below for 
seven bells. Afterward we sang "A Wet Sheet" and 
" A Life on the Ocean Wave," and Nash did very 
prettily a stave or two of " Merrily, Merrily Goes the 
Bark," and between all these selections we went below 
for seven bells. 

The first old woman by this was a little ill, and we lashed 
her to a camp-chair and planted her aft, while we went 
below to the chart-room. Then the breeze died out and 
we were becalmed, so we got out the quadrant and took 
our bearings. For hours we drifted, " like painted ships 
upon a painted ocean." Well provisioned and provided 
with the means of having unlimited seven bells, our stal- 
wart hearts never flinched. Of one thing we were solid 
certain, we had no water in our holds, and the jest ran 
on and the songs were sung, and lots of things were eaten, 
and — and then some anxious mortal looked at a watch. 
Great king ! It was six o'clock, and the Commodore was 
due at the Casino at eight and the prima-donna due in 
her dressing-room at seven. The first old woman was 
out of an engagement, but she was sick of a nautical life, 
and elected to go in the boat that was to take the anx- 
ious Thespians to the distant shore, where six cornfields, 
a potato patch and an apple orchard took them to a 
depot. The party were nicely balanced in the dinky, and 
the heavy woman was besought to plant her feet in the 
exact centre of the boat, which she did, but some one's 
hand slipped. She sat down w T ith an expression of 
anguish (used before for Hamlefs mother) on a rowlock, 
and the "sickening thud " was succeeded by a vision of 
two No. 6 boot-soles — common -sense heels — two yards of 
knitted leaf-lace and some tape-strings. A yell of hor- 



38 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

ror greeted this spectacle, but the loblolly boy, quick as 
a wink, clapped an oar under her shoulders, and the light 
comedian, an expert swimmer, jumped in and buoyed her 
up. Ropes were attached to her head and heels, and 
we on deck began to pull. But, if she weighed two hun- 
dred pounds when she was dry, she weighed four hun- 
dred, water-soaked as she was. 

The great head of our skipper here asserted itself. 
"Bail her out," said he. We were all willing to go bail 
if any one would take it for her, but no one offered — 
time was going on — Ryley must leave. " Tie her up to 
the after part of the boat ; I'll send a derrick from off 
shore and some one to work it," said he. But just then 
help came from a yacht in the distance and the water- 
logged lady was taken on board with much boosting and 
more pulling. The little boat made for shore, a mile and 
a half away, and Captain Nash, in a nice baritone voice, 
sang " The Sea, the Open Sea," while the first heavy 
wrung out her skirts and threatened to founder us with 
the water she had brought on board. 

By-and-by we had the twenty-sixth fright of the day. 
The returning boat was pulled by two able-bodied young 
female seamen, but they got in between two Glen Island 
boats and slopped about in such a hair-standing way that 
we were only anxious to recover their bodies. This 
agony was protracted for a long time, until, the Starin 
boom subsiding, we took the perilous passengers on 
board. Then we all sang " Blow, Ye Winds, I O," till the 
effort met a response. u We'll go into town in good 
shape," said the skipper, and we went below for eight 
bells. Sure enough, she was scudding when we came 
up. Nash examined the chart and found no danger 
signals marked for the vicinity of the Bermuda Islands 
(we were just off Glen Island, but what's sauce for the 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 39 

goose is sauce for the gander, and we had no chart of 
Mr. StarinJ. 

It was a jolly sail for the next twenty minutes, when, 
crash ! bang ! we were hoisted up on a beautiful steady 
rock, and we dipped to windward and bent to starboard 
and did all sorts of things to larboard but come off ! 
There we stuck. The captain went below and reported 
a hole as big as a barrel in her stern. " Take to the 
boat," said he heroically, "leave me to my fate." We 
were a couple of hundred yards off shore, and the cap- 
tain swims, so we took his advice and the boat and sent a 
man to take him off the wreck, and after unheard-of 
trouble on land we got to New York and to Seighortner's 
for a nice supper, at which the Admiral returned thanks 
for the way in which we had carefully hung up the 
Madeleine in a nice dry place for the night. She has 
had some planks nailed over the hole we made, and 
to-day she is rock-hunting, as good as ever. 



THE FORTUNE TELLERS. 



The Gusher got hold of a young woman the other 
day who was desirous of penetrating the veil of the 
future, and contemplated visting one of the advertising 
fortune-tellers of the city. The lady was in a great deal 
of trouble. The Alphonse of her existence had been 
mysterious and suspicious of late ; there had been a 
terrible episode at a ball during the week before, and 
altogether the demon of jealousy was aroused. She an- 
nounced to me her determination to " know the worst," 
and for this purpose visit a fortune-teller. 

"Let's visit a half-dozen of 'em," said I ; "don't do 
things by halves. We will wring from fate the whole 
dreadful boodle of woe. I'll chip in and pay for three of 
'em ; you do the same ; and out of six seers it will go 
hard if we don't seer little into the nefarious proceedings 
of Alphonse." 

And we started. The papers gave the address of ten 
different astrologers, clairvoyants and fortune-tellers. 
We selected six and took the one nearest home for the 
first pop. 

In the basement of a decent house on the East side 
we were ushered into the presence of an ordinary man of 
middle age, dressed in a business suit—" an every-day 
young man " — the sort of person you would expect to 
find behind the counter of any dry-goods store. He took 
my anxious friend into a little room without a window, 
lighted by a student lamp ; asked her the day and hour 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 41 

of her birth ; drew something on a sheet of paper that 
looked like a gridiron, with a rampant kitchen poker and 
a couchant kitchen tongs each side of it ; held her trem- 
bling little hand and told her, " A dark man would work 
her mischief ; she would be married within a year and 
lose her first children — twins — but afterward raise a large 
family ; that great danger would overtake her ; and only 
by consulting the best star-reading astrologers in the 
place where she happened to be, would she avoid a 
season of w T oe." 

This, with the gridiron, was only fifty cents, and we 
were w^ell pleased. On the next block we struck an 
oyster saloon with the legend " Families supplied " in 
the window ; but on inquiring we learned that no such 
" large family " as our astrologer guaranteed would be 
supplied for fifty cents. Here we took a car up Third 
avenue to Thirty-something street to consult Madame 

. We were received by a gray-haired man, who 

conveyed us into the reception-room on the first floor of 

a flat-house. Madame proved to be an angular, 

slab-sided, sharp-eyed woman, who wrested her informa- 
tion of the future not only from the hand of fate, but 
your own hand. She was a palmist. Maria removed 
her glove and submitted her claw to the inquiring gaze 
of the Madame. 

Now r , then, our troubles began. The " line of life " 
had some very devious ramifications ; the " Mount of 
Venus " — somev/here in the vicinity of the base of the 
thumb — exhibited a tendency to become volcanic ; there 
was a terrible discovery made of disaster by sea in the 
neighborhood of the little finger, and a mysterious wrinkle 
near the centre of the hand predicted with unerring 
exactitude a red-headed husband of jealous tempera- 
ment, and a cross-eyed boy, who would be drowned in 



42 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

his twelfth year. Maria weakened, and I hastened to 
disgorge my dollar, which was Madame's fee, and we 
went off, per Xtown bob-tail, to the lair of Professor 
, in Sixth Avenue. 

This was up one flight of stairs, and was something 
like a supernatural shop. A thick pair of green curtains 
shut out the light. A tremendous chart of the heavens 
hung on the wall. Astronomical apparatus stood on the 
table, and a white-bearded, bald-headed old man in a 
long dressing-gown of sombre purple asked us gently to 
be seated. Again the hour and day of birth w r ere re- 
quested, and our reverend informant began with a pair 
of dividers and a compass to cast a horoscope. We 
learned that Mars was in collision with Taurus at the 
time of our birth (which, being translated, meant that 
our mothers were taking the bull by the horns). We 
were further disturbed by the announcement that Capri- 
corn, whom we had always considered as friendly to us 
as old Capsicum, was inimical to our interests, and unless 
a conjunction with Cancer could be brought about, the 
next year would be disastrous. The contiguity of Ursa 
Major to Andromeda denoted a stump of a husband with 
a predilection for apoplexy, and four children, more or 
less unhealthy ; and the active interference of Saturn at 
an angle of forty-five degrees with our guiding star 
showed but too plainly that our maiden aunt Hannah 
would be removed by measles during the coming summer. 

I supported Maria down the stairs, bearing the Nativity 
that cast such a shadow on our prospects under my left 
arm, and we turned our dejected footsteps toward Dr. 

, an unfailing medium for probing the future for 

the bullets of fate. 

There was considerable cheerfulness about this gentle- 
man's apartments. He had birds and musical instru- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 43 

ments hanging round, and a familiar-looking bit of 
drugget, and red table-cover and dried grasses in the 
place. The spiritual doctor turned out to be rotund and 
jolly, and redolent of beer freshly drunk, and we sat 
down to hike up spooks in the best possible trim. He 
asked me if I had ever consulted spirits before, and I 
told him I had enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with 
Charley Foster and his large collection of choice spirits 
— that when Jim Collier kept the " Histery," corner of 
Broadway and Thirteenth Street, I was qualified to give 
rectified opinions on the subject, and that my relations 
with Shed Shook settled the matter. I knew as much 
about spirits as a distillery, and so the seance began. 
We wrote the names of dead friends on slips of paper. 

Maria's Aunt Hepzibah came up with remarkable 
viciousness. She said she " was watching over to direct 
and indirect her, but want of faith kept the conditions 
unfavorable. The coming year was to be one of power- 
ful disaster. A faithless husband, two children with the 
rickets, inflammatory rheumatism and a bad fall would 
all come to her in that year." I thought this was tough, 
for a spring, summer, hard winter, and a bad fall to drop 
into one year broke her quite up. 

The procession formed again, and we took up the line 

of March for Mrs. , who was infallible, and dwelt on 

Forty-first Street. This critter was cadaverous and gray, 
and looked like Cushman made up for Merriles — and, 
indeed, an evident attempt at a supernatural get-up had 
been made ; her bony hands had been lined with Indian- 
ink till they were ghastly ; a hollow circle of purplish ink 
surrounded her eyes ; her dress was of black cotton vel- 
vet, and a mass of coarse black lace fell round her head 
and shoulders. She sat down in front of Maria, and 
when Maria from force of habit was about to say she was 



44 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

born at four o'clock, Sunday morning, in the year , 

the prophetess shut her lips by saying : " I know all your 
past as well as your future." 

This made me very comfortable. I thought, " Well, 
we've struck the right old cat at last ; but she shall keep 

her attention on Maria." Just here Mrs. took 

Maria's hand, shut her own eyes and began to have fits. 
The spasms were wicked to see, and Maria, being 
weakly, got scared ; but I reached for a water pitcher 
and remarked, " This woman must be brought to by 
immediate and copious inundation — the Croton is ris- 
ing." So was the prophetess, as the first drop struck her. 
" Put down that pitcher," said she. " I am going into a 
trance." And she did — but with one eye half opened 
and keeping a bright lookout for me. 

After a space of silence she began murmuring indis- 
tinctly, and suddenly gaining her power of spirit, she 
cried : " Oh, Heaven ! what a condition this poor 
woman is in ; the left lung is infested with tubercles ; 
the right ventricle is much impeded ; this is a sure case 
of heart disease ; the aorta does not act normally ; your 
stommick is impaired ; the coats of the stommick fails in 
some respects." Being a female stomach, I asked if the 
coats were not in this case petticoats ; but was instantly 
repressed. 

" The pleura doesn't suit me," continued the doc- 
tress ; " symptoms of inflammation is visible in the peri- 
cardium." (We were getting at the trouble with Al- 
phonse now.) "A species of congestion has took place 
in this locality." Just here Maria's diaphragm stopped 
her, but her scientific insight trampled over that obstacle, 
and with a shriek of alarm she brought up at poor 
Maria's liver. " Mercy ! mercy ! how do you get round 
and manage to live ? here's such torpidity as I never 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 45 

see." Now, then, I interfered. u We came here to get 
information of the future, not to have a medical exami- 
nation," I said. 

" But this woman hain't got no future with things car- 
rying on this way inside her," exclaimed my trance-par- 
ent fraud. Maria by this time began to feel very unwell, 
and the doctress continued her explorations. I sought 
to break off this unpleasant thread of investigation by 
asking questions. 

" How do you know the lady's liver is torpid ! " I 
inquired. 

" I can see the torpids," said the doctress ; " and 
unless she takes my medicine for liver complaint she 
won't live a year." 

I grabbed Maria and made for the door. Madame 
came out of her trance in a hurry. " You haven't paid 
me for my examination yet," said she. 

" And that ain't the worst of it," said I. We gained 
the street without further interference. Now, then, for 
the wonderful gifted seventh daughter, born with a gall. 

It was growing late of a murky afternoon as we toiled 
up the steps to the den of the gifted one. She, like her 
predecessor, was given to time-compelling tricks. A 
dark gown on which cabalistic characters were sew T n of 
white cotton adorned her rotund figure. She took a 
greasy pack of cards, her kit of tools for picking the 
lock of the gate of futurity, and commenced operations. 
Maria was to lose her husband in the summer, but 
marry again next fall ; have six children ; meet with a 
money loss ; a dark man was coming to the house ; there 
was to be a speedy removal, a letter to her bed from 
across sea, and general faint-heartedness. In this glad 
way we were making history very fast, when it occurred 
to me I had seen fortune-tellers before. I studied her 



46 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

grimy old features till they came back to me, and then I 
concluded to go into the fortune-telling business myself. 

" Why, see here," said I, " let me read the cards : You 
engaged for second old woman with George Howard for 
a season at the Adelphi Theatre, Troy, about twenty 
years ago. You were to join the company at Green's 
Opera House in Albany, and play in a version of * Ida 
May/ You came up to the back door at the last min- 
ute on the night of the company's first performance 
there, and told a frightful story of present necessity that 
got a few dollars out of the management to go get your 
baggage off the boat. You came back in half an hour 
so comfortably full you could just walk. You managed 
to escape the eagle eye of the boss, and got on the 
stage. You wandered on in a scene where you had no 
business, sat down on a garden bank, fell off it speech- 
less, and ended your engagement in just twenty minutes 
after you entered on its duties. So, having disclosed 
your past, we wish you a good afternoon," and gave our 
two dollars, and lugged my friend out. 

But Maria isn't satisfied. She says she didn't get any 
information because I was along. Next time she's going 
to tackle fate without me. 



UNFORGOTTEN "PAULINES." 



Something brought " The Lady of Lyons " to the front 
this morning, and your Gusher began to think over the 
Paulines of her acquaintance. They have been many, 
various, of all conditions and sizes. The youngest was 
little Julia Wyatt ; the oldest, an ancient dame who was 
stage-struck during the last century, and brought herself 
out as Pauline when she was in the fifties ; the prettiest 
was Sallie St. Clair ; the fiercest was Mrs. Waller ; the 
fattest was Carlotta LeClercq, and the funniest was poor 
Annie Seuter. 

George Wyatt, the eccentric manager who rode the 
circuit of the Eastern towns many years ago, had two 
adopted daughters, at that time nine and ten years old — 
Julia and Helen. He drilled these children in Romeo and 
Juliety Pauline and Claude, and Camille and Armand, 
and, with the rest of the cast full size, did those aston- 
ished plays, "Lady of Lyons, "" Camille," and "The 
Loves of the Capulets." It was a lively series of per- 
formances. The Connecticutters took 'em in good part 
— saw no incongruity in the idea ; but the little Gusher 
just howled and had lots of fun by herself. Poor John 
Flood would be the Beauseant ; old Beader Pratt, as big 
as John Gilbert, did Monsieur Deschapelles; Wyatt him- 
self, weighing two hundred and fifty, the size of John 
Duffy, played Damasj Mrs. Wyatt, an Irishwoman with 
a brogue like Castle Garden, did the Widow; and Julia, 
aged nine, and small for her age, whisked around with a 



48 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

train the size of a kitchen apron, denouncing the villain 
Beauseant, who stooped over her in order to hear that his 
base proposals were properly refused. Then Helen, as 
the Prince, two sizes larger than her sister, would enter 
on the scene, and George Wyatt would almost go on all- 
fours to fight the combat with his three-foot adversary. 

Then there was the heavy-weight Pauline. At some 
benefit, where slices of most everything went into the bill, 
McCullough did Claude and Carlotta LeClercq did the 
Lady of Lyons. One act — that was all ; but it was enough. 
The cottage act, I think it was, and Carlotta, in an ex- 
tremely low-necked dress, filled me with apprehension. At 
that time she was very fat — whatever she is now — and 
she looked for all the world as if she were built of calves- 
foot jelly. She shook and surged and billowed about, 
and I thought, " Great Heavens ! if she should slop 
over ? " And she came precious near it so often that the 
danger was excitingly disagreeable. She threw up her arms 
in her distress, and the pink meat gurgled around the 
bones. Oh ! a succulent and juicy Pauline was Carlotta, 
and John danced around her as if he was almost pleased 
at his repulse, and wouldn't have known what to do with 
her had she viewed him more favorably. The stairs 
crackled as the Widow led her off to the attic room, and 
I never saw a scareder man than John when she seemed to 
relent with an awful creak on the fourth stair, nor greater 
relief on the human countenance than on his when she 
finally disappeared. 

For a good, determined old pump of a Pauline, with 
whom no Claude would play tricks, commend me to Mrs. 
Waller. I struck her up in Troy, some few years ago, 
doing "The Hunchback " and " The Lady of Lyons." 
She took it out of Julia with a fierceness that boded no 
good to Clifford when she said, " I vow I'm twenty." 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 



49 



The truth-loving editor of the Budget groaned. And 
when she cried, " Clifford, why don't you speak to me ? " 
a boy upstairs sung out, " Because he's paralyzed ! " ^ou 
know how one gets fascinated by the terrible, and I went 
next night to see Pauline, and I never shall forget it. She 
was as frigid as the North Pole. I could have gone skat- 
ing all round her. She chilled our young blood ; but she 
had deeper depths of horror, and behold ! the third night 
I took in " The Duchess of Malfi," and here occurred an 
accident that, before dissecting any more Paulines, I must 
tell you. 

You remember that cheerful, dramatized night-mare, 
" The Duchess ?" In the last act, murder, arson, treach- 
ery, and treason have done their bloody work. Mrs. 
Malfi is in a fourth-proof mad-house — clean daft — she 
weeps and wails, she shrieks with demoniac laughter, she 
sees things — she crouches, she prowls, she cavorts about 
the stage apostrophizing air-drawn children and deceased 
grandparents, while all the time from under the stage 
came the fitful wails of incarcerated companions in mad- 
ness. To accomplish the "cries outside" properly, the 
spare members of the company sat in the green-room, 
jolly as sand-boys ; the prompter bored a hole by his 
desk and dropped a string down into the green-room 
through it ; old Daddy Herbert, underneath, sat on a 
high stool, with the tape in his hand. When a howl was 
needed, Pop Steel, prompter, pulled his string, and the 
company below stopped conversation and emitted heart- 
broken cries of various natures. This was great fun, and 
for the last act the Gusher went round behind to lend a 
merry little howl to the band. 

It happened on this particular night that after one 
series of groans, when the action of the play demanded 
a rest, Lane, the property man, caught a cracking big rat, 
4 



50 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

and all the company, including Daddy Herbert, forsook 
the green-room to look at it. I was poring over a 
book of the play, when I saw the tape-string wiggling 
like mad in a wild search for the wails of the demented. 
Now, the Gusher has lungs of immense capacity, but she 
longs for innovations ; so, instead of raising her dulcet 
voice in a double-barrelled yell, she grabbed one of those 
twisted brass instruments, called a trombone, that a mem- 
ber of the company had left behind when he joined the 
rat-hunt. She bent her energy to the getting out of it 
all the wickedness that lies in a trombone. 

My senses, what a row ! Prolonged toots, like an ex- 
press coming round a curve ; young shrieks that, full- 
grown, would have crowded ear infirmaries ; a variety of 
notes that only a steam calliope could rival. " In love 
and pleased with ruin," fascinated by the dread instru- 
ment, still blew I on. What mattered if the string long 
since had ceased to vibrate ! What mattered if Mrs. 
Waller was at white-heat upstairs and the audience in 
roars of laughter ! I was playing the trombone to the 
queen's taste, and until David Waller, Harry Hotto, and 
Maurice Pike wrested the instrument from my grasp, I 
just warmed up " the Duchess of Malfi," and made things 
very funny for everybody — but myself ; I caught it. 

I was going to tell you of a very droll performance of 
Pauline that happened at this same Adelphi Theatre. 
The star was a pretty little woman ; but it turned out 
she hadn't made much of "a head," as they say in Dub- 
lin. We went from Troy down to Albany to visit the 
Western girls during the day, and, to fortify us against a 
sleigh-ride back to Troy, Lucille compounded some se- 
ductive hot stuff of whisky, eggs, milk and brandy. I 
never knew eggs and milk to behave so in a custard, but 
in this instance they raised the mischief. The nearer we 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 5 1 

got to Troy the worse Pauline became ; but she pulled 
herself together and got through fairly till the time she 
enters and is told by her parents the Prince must leave 
them. Here Pauline lost her bearings. She gravely 
turned to the old folks and began Desdemona's speech : 

I do perceive here a divided duty. 

To you I am bound by birth and education. 

My birth and education both do teach me 

How to respect you ; but here's my husband, etc. 

Charley Salisbury was doing the Dad ; he promptly 
went on : 

My life has fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, 

And that which should accompany old age, 

Love, obedience, honor, troops of friends, 

I have not ; but in their place, curses, not loud, but deep, 

And one fair daughter tighter that a peep. 

It was lovely ! 



SOME PUBLIC NUISANCES. 



I've made up my mind to go to my friend, the pho- 
tographer, and get a second-hand screw — one of those 
cast-iron, vice-like contrivances that imprison the human 
skull while the camera does its fatal work. I will cart 
this to theatres with me, and impale the cocoanut in front 
of me on its tines like a doughnut on a fork. You see I 
am desperate, and if you meet me in the lobby lugging 
something that looks like the original old cross-bow gun 
Edward introduced at the battle of Cressy, don't be 
afraid ; it's not ammunition — it's my apparatus for see- 
ing the show. 

At a first night lately, I sat behind a big woman who 
always accompanies an old musical critic to the theatres. 
She wears on her devoted head a regular old-timer water- 
fall ; the hair of half a dozen women is piled up the 
back, sides and top. On this hirsute construction she 
throws out little hair corns and wens. I suppose she 
would term them puffs. And then she clasps on an 
Alpine hat with the spoils of a herd of ostriches waving 
above. This cheerful woman betrays symptoms of 
palsy, St. Vitus' dance and epilepsy. That blessed head 
of hers bobs and wiggles and shakes like the topknot of 
a Chinese mandarin. 

I sat the other night in blissful ignorance of the stage, 
till it struck me I'd like to see somebody on it. I 
scrooched and peeked under the right ear-ring of this 
theatrical abomination. In an instant that loophole was 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 53 

lost and the head ducked to the right. Here was my 
chance. I flew for the opening at the left. Old fuss- 
and-feathers was back as quick as I. This operation 
was repeated twenty times a minute. So I gave up 
further attempt to see the performance and watched the 
waving head, now up, now down ; now right and left. 
Oh, Jacob's Oil ! how I did wish she might have a stiff 
neck for about half an hour. 

Next to the girl with the dreadful big hat and the old 
hen with the hair embankment, comes the ruffian who 
rolls up his coat and sits on it. It's a sure sign he's in 
an impecunious condition and is wearing old clothes. 
No man ruthlessly rolls a valuable garment and drops on 
it as if he were a pile-driver. And if the coat is a good 
one, then he's an unbroken countryman fixed up to " go 
to York." He has a wild idea that some one will steal 
that new overcoat unless he has it under him, or he has 
been used to the soft side of a wooden bench, and got 
into the habit of tempering the tough board to the ten- 
der pantaloons by making a sandwich of himself, his coat 
and a section of hickory (man-like, getting the meat in 
the wrong place). 

An inspiring spectacle used to be a procession of Peter 
Cooper (the ex-mayor) and the air-pillow. Sometimes 
Peter went, already blown up, with the air-pillow on his 
arm ; sometimes the ex-mayor bore it under his coat, 
folded up. It was one of the old-fashioned kind — built 
like a life-preserver, round, with a hole in the middle. 
They didn't go to theatres often, if ever ; but the Gusher 
w T as in for all sorts of wild excitement, and therefore 
took in Geographical Society meetings and ratifications 
and debates. So in the bowels of the earth, over the 
corner of Eighth street and Third avenue, she often 
came upon the blowing up of Peter when he came with 



54 ™E GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

his cushion in a collapsed state. But Peter was a philan- 
thropist, and I honestly believe, in his tripe-like old peri- 
cardium, there was as much good-will to man as is found 
in the human heart. If he thought he was obstructing 
any fellow-creature's view of Chief-Justice Daly's geo- 
graphical legs, he would blow off his cushion as quick as 
a wink. Heaven bless him ! 

Not so the hair-raising woman or the coat-roosting 
man. They are as careless of the feelings of others as 
they are careful of their own, but the hour of retribution 
draws nigh. I'm going to get the head-screw, and I'm 
equal to applying it red hot, as I did the plaster to Char- 
lotte Cushman's back. I never told you about that, did 
I ? Well, I must, for it's funny. 

Charlotte was stopping in the same hotel with me once, 
many years ago. She had a faithful colored maid and a 
Scotch terrier as travelling companions. Lottie was not 
extravagant ; so, dispensing with a carriage the first 
night of her engagement, the dog, the maid, and the 
tragedienne set off to find the back door of the theatre. 
It was not more than three blocks away ; but in a blind- 
ing blizzard of a storm, it took her some three-quarters 
of an hour to reach it by going quite out of town and 
coming in by a cross-lot cowpath. She took a fearful 
cold, and after delighting the youthful Gusher with her 
marvellous Meg Merriles, won her heart completely by 
asking her to share her supper. It was during this sup- 
per that the subject of a plaster was broached. The 
cherished- dog was taken wheezy, and the maid began 
rubbing its throat with camphorated oil. Charlotte pro- 
duced a lovely kid plaster, thickly spread with a black 
mixture like tar. 

" Now, warm that well," she said, " and put it just be- 
tween my shoulders." 






THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 55 

My acquaintance with Burgundy pitch in plasters was 
limited. I held the blamed thing to a roaring grate fire, 
while Miss Cushman let down the neck of her dress. 
When the plaster began to melt in the fervid heat, and 
my fingers were well scorched, I clapped it on the un- 
fortunate actress's back, and a howl went up to heaven 
that shook the roof. 

" Take it off ! " she shrieked. It wouldn't come off, 
and it didn't come off; it stopped where it was and 
sizzled, and we had doctors and all sorts of curatives for 
burns, and I was in disgrace (as usual). This digression 
has little to do with the subject, only to show how likely 
I am to give folks things red-hot when my sympathy is 
aroused. 



A PRISON INCIDENT. 



I was reminded, when passing Meriden recently, of an 
event happening many years ago, by the boarding of the 
cars by a mean, contemptible-looking man I had thought 
dead years ago. This man's name is Doolittle, and he 
used to be keeper in the Wethersfield State-prison. He 
bears on his face some awful scars. 

I think the time is not far distant when the festive 
Connecticutter will begin to believe that, if he would 
have " his days long in the land," he must not, when 
appointed State-prison warden, act as though the spirit 
of Danton and Robespierre had possession of his Yankee 
body. That small but severe State began a swindling 
warfare on man and beast many years ago, when a peck 
of hickory nutmegs, " biled " in a pot, with one original 
. Jacobs, did well enough for flavoring the unimpassioned 
doughnut of that innocent period, and when shoe- 
pegs sharpened at both ends passed for oats with the 
unenlightened horse. 

But time has changed all that. The blue laws and the 
wooden nutmegs have passed away, and the only vestige 
of the ignorance, the superstition, and the barbarity of 
those early days exists in a small town six miles from the 
capital, Hartford. 

This town smells strong in the nose of high Heaven 
for many and various offences. In the first place, 
Wethersfield is one vast onion-bed. Every woman and 
child in it has corns on his or her knees from kneeling at 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 57 

the eternal task of weeding. Tears fill the eyes of the 
stranger within its gates when first the affecting effluvia 
bursts upon his nose. It is an old town, a pretty town, 
with old, old houses and magnificent elms, and the pleas- 
ant bit of the Connecticut River known as Wethersfield 
Cove, hid away among green fields and waving onions. 
But of a sudden a turn in the elm-embowered road brings 
you face to face with a huge blue-stone mass of build- 
ings, whose grated windows and forbidding aspect plainly 
tell you you are fronting the Wethersfield inquisition — 
the Connecticut State-prison. 

Prisons were not built for rewards of merit. It is not 
supposed their inmates are happy or expect to be. But 
as there is a merciful God above, to whom the best of us 
pray for mercy, never for justice, so should the guilty 
(and sometimes the unfortunate and not the guilty) find 
the justice meted to them by imperfect man tempered 
with that attribute of divinity. If ever there has been 
inhumanity shown to poor fallen humanity, it has been 
within those dark-blue walls. I question if ever the dun- 
geon that echoed to the groans of the tortured Ugolino, 
or the unhappy Leonardo da Vinci, heard more of man's 
misery than the Connecticut State-prison. Warden after 
warden has fallen before the maddened victims of their 
tyranny, till it really seems as if the law of self-preserva- 
tion would in some way control the Connecticutters , wild 
desire to oppress and destroy. And so I am prompted 
to tell you the story of Doolittle and the way his face 
came to be seamed. 

A good many years ago a young Irishman came to this 
country and opened a modest little liquor and cigar-shop 
in the city of New Haven. The building occupied by 
Gerald Toole for this purpose was a frame dwelling- 
house, further inhabited by several families. One night 



58 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

this building burned, and Toole, being insured fully, was 
accused by his landlord of incendiarism, tried, found 
guilty by twelve bullheads on evidence of a very weak 
character, and sentenced by some judicial lightning-bug 
to imprisonment for life. A mere boy of twenty, he was 
consigned broken-hearted to the tender mercies of the 
Wethersfield prison. He had never made a shoe in his 
life, and for that reason probably the astute authorities 
put the poor devil in the shoe-shop. He meekly, hum- 
bly went to work to do his best. In a few weeks he got 
so well up in his part of the business that the overseer 
in charge told him he must do this particular branch of 
work on an entire case (12 pairs) of shoes each day or 
take a flogging. Day after day saw that poor young 
wretch working with all his might only to accomplish 
nine or ten pairs, to be flogged with leather thongs in the 
hands of a huge blackamoor ; to have his raw and bloody 
back washed down by a bucket of salt and water ; his 
shirt put on and his maimed, mangled carcass thrust 
into a cell, where sleep and misery refused to lie down 
together. Day with its blessed sun followed these nights 
of horror, till finally the man Toole was turned into a 
fiend, who looked upon any means of escape as justifiable. 
There came a day when, working desperately at his 
bench all the hours allotted to him, night overtook him 
with only the eleventh pair completed. He was as usual 
taken to the stone-room, where the negro and the whip 
awaited him. This time the forlorn, abused wretch had 
made up his mind that if he must die he would sell his 
life dearly. As the inhuman overseer, Doolittle, with his 
assistant, began stripping the victim, the warden entered 
the room, and, falling on his knees, poor Toole begged 
him to interfere, pleaded with him as if for life, assured 
him that another day, he thought, he would be able to 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 59 

get through his case of boots — he had done his best that 
day. But his prayer was of no avail ; the warden told 
them to go ahead with the flogging. 

The shirt was torn from his raw back, and the lash of the 
negro descended. In a moment, however, the scene was 
changed. Instead of tremblingly receiving the cruel lash, 
the victim suddenly turned upon his tormentors with a 
small shoe-knife he had concealed in his waist-band, and, 
making an onslaught on the entire party, cut and slashed 
right and left among them. The fiend Doolittle and the 
brute negro each got gash after gash, and as the warden 
came within reach of the infuriated man, he got a rip 
from the flying knife that loosened his unnatural bowels 
for the rest of his natural life. Grabbing his injured crop 
with both hands he made for his office, sat down, and in 
less than a brace of shakes gave up his little ghost. 

After the warden left the flogging party, there was a 
reinforcement. Toole was overpowered, kicked, beaten, 
dragged and left in a dark cell for dead. However, the 
warden was a gone man, and as a natural consequence 
Toole would be wanted on a charge of murder. So to the 
cell they went, got the half-dead creature out, aad went 
to work fixing up their case to make a presentable show 
in the Hartford courts. This miserable man was tried, 
convicted, and hanged, all in due time, and three years 
thereafter there died in New Haven the owner of the 
house poor O'Toole was sentenced for burning, and this 
landlord on his death-bed confessed to the priest that he 
was the real culprit. The good father would not, and 
did not, grant him absolution until that confession was 
made to the world and not to the church. 

Law has got into such a muddle in this country, and 
" put-up jobs " so often act instead of even-handed jus- 
tice, that, going through our own prisons, I am not sure 



60 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

whether I am viewing the real worth and virtue of the 
State put out of the way of interfering with criminals 
by those who manage the bar and bench. Certainly the 
annals of the Connecticut State-prison show some of the 
keepers and wardens to be harder and wickeder than the 
criminals under their charge. 



YE CHEWERS OF GUM. 



Let any one advertise having discovered some emollient 
for smoothing the human countenance — some unguent 
that, applied to the face, will compose and beautify its 
expression, and he will find ninety-nine women out of 
a hundred anxious to try it. And yet it does seem as 
if every other woman was making a fright of herself 
chewing gum. Wherever you go, in stores, in cars, in 
church and theatre, abroad and at home, it's chew, 
chew, chew ! 

The masticating operation is not a lovely one. Byron 
couldn't bear to see a pretty woman feed, and coun- 
selled the professional beauty of his time to chew her 
food in the privacy of her apartment, and tackle the table 
with her own grocery well stocked, that she might dally 
with a fork and trifle with a spoon, and spare admirers 
the pain of seeing her jaws in the spasms of mastication. 

Good Lord ! What would he do now in these days of 
tutti-frutti and spruce gum ? Chew — chew — chew ; 
wiggle and woggle their unceasing jaws ; turn over the 
unending cud with restless tongue. Chew, chew, chew ! 
On the faces, upheaving with this exciting engagement, 
there is an accompanying expression of idiotic interest 
in the absorbing business on hand — a sort of chewing- 
gum abstraction. 

I looked at a line of women in a Broadway car lately. 
By the door was a large, fat woman who had studied 
the panel adorned with an advertisement of chewing- 



62 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

gum. There was a ponderous, surcharged air upon her 
stolid face, as if the announcement she was reading 
was taking effect. I glanced at the next woman — a 
girl with frail figure and luminous eyes, aesthetically 
dressed, innocent and demure. She suddenly projected 
her chin, made a circuit in space with her under jaw, 
turned over her cud with a wallop of her tongue, and 
started in as if dear life depended upon her getting sev- 
enty-five incisions to the minute into that gum. 

I turned in horror to the next human face. It was that 
of a colored girl, with a "basket of wash " on her lap. 
Her eyes were rolled up in a state of beatitude till noth- 
ing but the whites of 'em showed. She was having an 
attack of short, sharp, decisive chews that gave little 
regular jerks to the top of the head. 

Two young women sat next along the line. 

" Ya-ump ! ya-ump ! Was Henry at your — ya-ump — 
house, last night ? — ya-ump, ya-ump ! " asked one. 

" Ah-ung ! ah-ung ! You bet — ah-ung ! Catch him 
staying away — ah-ung ! ah-ung ! " chewed the other, and 
then they sat and looked me over and did " ya-ump " 
and " ah-ung " in unison. 

Further along a lady held the Amelie Rives number 
of Lippincotf s before her face in that intense way that 
women accord to that issue. But outside the page there 
was a rapidly bulging and contracting cheek, and a now- 
you-see-it-and-now-you-don't play of eyebrow, which 
indicated that the deadly work of gum- chewing was 
going on in the very rockiest spot along Miss Rives's 
lines. Passionate passages and tutti-frutti spasms were 
taking it out of that woman's frontispiece together. 

So I reverted with relief to the cataleptic countenance 
of the fat lady by the door. Great Scott ! The imper- 
turbable calm was all broken up ; the torpid cud was 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 63 

revolving like a button on a woodshed door. The mass 
of meat that composed her cheeks was writhing and con- 
torting as I have seen the hapless child across its 
mother's knee. She was out-chewing the chewers, and I 
felt my way to the platform with my eyes shut on the 
dread spectacle of a half-dozen women all in a row chew- 
ing gum. 

Girls, young women, and old women, for heaven's sake 
sit down before a looking-glass and take a look at 
yourselves chewing gum ! The practice makes you look 
ridiculous. It distorts your faces. It cheapens your 
style. It endows your mug with the expression of an 
idiot. I defy a girl, however pretty, to look well chewing 
gum, and its work is fatal on the female face surviving 
the first freshness of youth. It brings up the muscles of 
the neck like whip-cords ; it stretches the flabby skin of 
the cheeks by one movement, and shows up the wrinkles 
by the next. 

For the sake of your looks, stick your cud of gum on 
your mirror as you pin your hat on, and spare the public 
eye the painful exhibition of a woman in the pangs of 
gum-chewing. 



THE SAD STORY OF CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH. 



Did I ever tell you of Charlotte Elizabeth ? Lottie 
Libbie was a rag doll of mammoth proportions belonging 
to the Gusher at the tender age of five. On one hospi- 
table afternoon a few infant friends gathered, and it was 
proposed to give Charlotte one square meal. A hole 
was dug in her mouth and about a pound of cotton 
dragged up. The vacuum thus formed was filled with 
clam fritters, fricasseed chicken, and any other eatable 
thing we could lay our hands on. This meal was ad- 
ministered with a spoon and rammed down with the 
handle. 

Now, Charlotte's digestive faculties were not equal to 
her appetite. She suffered dreadfully with dyspepsia for 
three days, and then the family began to suffer. They 
tore up the floor for dead rats ; they sent for the Select- 
men to look into the drainage ; they disinfected and they 
deodorized with every means known in that unenlight- 
ened age and benighted city. 

Suddenly it began to be noticed that the awful per- 
fume stole over their agonized senses with strange regu- 
larity on my appearance. The Investigating Committee 
immediately turned their forces on me. I was trium- 
phantly acquitted. But, alas ! Charlotte was discovered. 
The dreadful creature was taken with the kitchen tongs 
at arm's length, and I was retired for fumigating. It is 
distinctly remembered that my remonstrances were heard 
at Rocky Hill, a distance of six miles, and my lament 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 65 

for Charlotte Elizabeth clouded the domestic circle for 
weeks. 

It was the third Sunday after " the deep damnation of 
her taking off " that every one but the darkey cook and 
the early Gusher went away to church, and the cook 
divulged the dreadful secret. 

if They done gone bury Chart 'Lisbeth under the p'ar- 
tree," said she. 

With a wild shout and a fire-shovel I started for the 
pear-tree, and the resurrection of my pet was effected in 
short order. There had been heavy rains and blistering 
suns. The coffinless body was a thousand times more 
hideous than before burial ; but I hugged my poor dar- 
ling to my faithful breast, and burst forth in a vow of 
earnest and dire vengeance. 

I knew the length of Parson Chauncey's sermons. 
My wrath was not to be nursed that long. Too mad to 
think of a bonnet or ceremony, with Charlotte under my 
arm, I bolted into church and up the aisle to the family 
pew in front of the chancel. The pews were high and 
my head was low. The worshippers were conscious of 
an undercurrent odor no way resembling Jockey Club. 
Remarks were passed that the drain had burst. Then, 
arriving at my family's headquarters, I rattled on the 
buttoned door, and, to show my triumph, stuck Charlotte's 
face — Charlotte's horrible, grave-stricken face — with the 
ghastly hole through which she had taken her first, last, 
fatal meal, yawning frightfully at my paralyzed mother 
— up over the top of the pew. 

There was in the pew a fashionable young aunt, who 
fainted in the corner ; there was a sympathetic little 
brother, who yelled out, "Where did yer find her? " and 
there was a stern and dignified theological uncle, who 
always said, " Spare the rod and spoil the child." As if 
5 



66 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

to receive the benediction or sing the doxology, this 
entire party rose. Charlotte and I headed the procession 
out of church, and I drop a curtain over the troublous 
interval that ensued. 

Every heart knoweth its own bitterness. I do not 
intrude my private griefs on the public, but it was the 
moral lesson that followed this episode, and that was read 
to me by the Rev. Mr. Chauncey, that I think applies to 
monstrosities besides Charlotte Elizabeth. The good 
pastor pursued me to my home and found me a little 
outlawed pirate, sitting on a hen-house near the " p'ar- 
tree," breaking my heart over a feeble bonfire, on which 
lay the smouldering rags of what was once my darling 
and my pride. My Christian uncle had built the funeral 
pyre, and with an umbrella warded off my rescuing attack 
with the clothes-poles. He was then court-plastering his 
head with family aid, and I, by common consent, was 
banished, when dear old Mr. Chauncey took me in hand. 

" My darling," he said, " in this world we must consult 
other people's feelings. That which we like "may be 
very unpleasant to those around us. Always before 
doing anything, think ' Will this be agreeable to others ? ' 
There were disagreeable features connected with our lost 
Charlotte that you failed to perceive. Her presence was 
not altogether desirable, and never force upon an assem- 
blage so unpleasant a creation as Charlotte just because 
you love her yourself. You crowded her with good 
things to no purpose, and you have made many worthy 
people miserable by dragging her before the public." 



MRS. PRATT'S EQUESTRIAN EXPLOIT. 



One summer afternoon Mrs. Doctor Pratt undertook to 
ride the doctor's horse. She was a short woman, weigh- 
ing about two hundred pounds, apothecary weight, and 
the horse was one that John Nathan, the circus man, sold 
to her husband and used to ride in the entry. 

Mrs. Pratt had a chair brought out and mounted with 
much dignity and cheerfulness. She had heard that it 
was unfashionable to wear any skirt but the habit-skirt ; 
but she had not heard that a pair of man's pants was 
inevitably worn underneath. But just with her ordinary 
summer pants on she rode away. 

At the corner of the principal street — just when all the 
bank men stood on the bank steps, and all the sports 
stood on the hotel steps, and all the women walked by to 
be looked at — a hand-organ struck up, " Oh, give me back 
my Arab steed." 

The Arab steed pricked up its ears and set up its tail. 
It remembered the old tune, and round and round in 
narrowing circles it went — cross one — sharp turn, in and 
out. Imagination peopled the street with spangled ban- 
ners and Mrs. Pratt became a circus for that deluded 
horse ! 

The woman lost her head — that was the first thing she 
lost — the spectators were unable to lend a hand, as they 
were holding their sides. Round and round went the 
nag. Mrs. P. concluded to slip off. Just as Bucephalus 
made a short turn, she took her foot out of the stirrup 



68 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

and jumped. But oh, horror ! her skirt remained hitched 
on the horn of the saddle. 

It was composed of treacherous alpaca, and Mrs. P. 
was solid and penetrating. She burst through it like the 
sun out of a cloud, and stood there in a basque waist of 
black alpaca, with ridiculous little tails on it, a pair of 
short, summer, white pants, trimmed with ruffles, a pair 
of striped brown and pink stockings, and two congress 
gaiters, without heels, No. 5^. 

Lum-te-dum — lum-te-dum. Round went the horse. 
There was no imagination about it then ; he had struck 
a circus at last, bless him ; and so had we. 

I was carried into the City Hotel and brought to during 
the afternoon by restoratives furnished from the most 
popular part of the building ; but from that day till 
the other night I never saw Mrs. Pratt's costume repro- 
duced till I saw the mermaid business of an actress at 
the Casino. 

The damsels of the stage should make a decided stand 
against this idiotic style of dress. No matter how hand- 
some a woman's form is, the half-and-half trick ruins it. 
It must be wholly male or wholly female, or the prettiest 
woman who ever stepped will be as much of a sight as 
was Mrs. Doctor Pratt when she lost her petticoat and 
nearly killed the subscriber. 



A RELIGIOUS WATERING-PLACE. 



The public prints have a great deal to say every year 
about that autocrat of Asbury, Deacon Bradley, and it's 
popularly supposed around New York that his edicts are 
directed against the unconventional actress within his 
gates. 

I've been reading of his late protest about bathing-suits 
and their continuance on the owner's back after the bath. 
So, when I went down to that cheerful resort to put in a 
holiday, I was greatly astonished to see the inhabitants 
clothed and in their right mind, and the theatrical colony 
by far the primmest and most clothed of all of 'em. 

True, on the sands controlled by Bradley, there are 
signs which read : " Remember, modesty in a bath is as 
necessary as soap ! " (Let us soap so.) And again : 
" A lady's water toilet should be made with discretion " 
(and a lock-stitch machine). 

The Gusher recollects an awful morning at the sea 
when she picked a thread off a friend's bathing-dress, 
and was paralyzed to see a frantic female stand before 
her in a simple yoke of flannel and short pants. The 
ready-ripper machine had attached the blouse to the 
yoke, and out on the green crest of the dancing billows 
rode the garment, while Maria shouted for an ambulance, 
with a touching collar of blue flannel doing duty for a 
dress, waist, and skirt. 

Behold ! I had pulled the string that worked the 
show, and made as much of a mess of it as did Little 



70 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Jimmy Jumpup last May in his beautiful new suit, when 
in a Fourth Avenue car he pulled a thread off his gaiters 
and opened his pants on the outside seam from hem to 
pocket. 

These anecdotes will crop up in these otherwise sedate 
papers, but they can be easily skipped by the student 
who reads me for moral support and religious instruction 
only, and not for amusement. 

As I say, the Bradley signs indicate that trouble has 
existed between the bathing-suits and Bradley. But I 
saw no ladies shopping in wet flannel or promenading 
barefoot in all Asbury. Down at Ocean Grove, where 
the fervent Baptist lives in tents and the mild Methodist 
fills the air with hymns, the sister in Israel goes about in 
her bath-suit and the decorous deacon lies about all day 
in knit drawers and a hammock. But then real Chris- 
tian people can do things with impunity that secular 
actresses couldn't think of without being condemned. 

A camp-meeting flirtation is as much worse than a foot- 
light mash as it's possible to imagine, and yet one doesn't 
get talked of and the other does. Along about six in the 
evening the air of Ocean Grove is strong of prayer and 
Medford rum. The religious lungs are often erinflated 
with Santa Cruz breath than the uninstructed dram- 
drinker. 

There isn't a drop of dreadful liquor sold in all that 
sanctified spot, but there's more poor whiskey drank 
there than there is in the Sixth Ward. They wrap up 
demijohns in rags, and swathe junk-bottles in blankets. 
They move from the wicked city to the pious colony 
accompanied by such stuff as the wicked actor-man or 
woman would use on their backs if they sprained 'em, 
but never introduce into their stomachs for any com- 
plaint. 



DELIGHTS OF THE COUNTRY. 



I am prepared to defend my statement when I say that 
New York as a watering-place, New York as a mountain 
retreat, and New York as a country summer resort lays 
away over Long Branch, Newport, the Catskills, and all 
the 'villes and 'tons and 'burgs that make up the list. 

Your Gusher is a Cockney. The beauties of nature, 
with bugs and without ice, are respectfully declined by 
yours truly. The majesty of " ocean ! mighty monster " 
is very nice ; but when everything you touch has a saline 
dampness that will not dry and your shoes are full of 
sand, a little city, dry and hot without, comes in very 
well. 

I've had a square laugh lately at some neighbors of 
mine. They are wealthy Germans, and the tinkering 
and improvements they keep up on their premises is past 
belief. Their houses are in the very heart of this dear 
old city ; but rural life they are bound to enjoy in their 
back yards. One old man has put up a tent, and in it 
he sleeps night after night ; the other has a little six-by- 
nine grape arbor. Quite early in the season the worms 
took off every particle of leaf from the skeleton vines. 
Undeterred by this condition of things, the dinner-table 
is set under this pastoral vine, the servants rush up and 
down the narrow flag-walk, and the family, carefully 
brushing off and picking out the worms, partake happily 
of the dishes brought to them from the comfortable 
house. A camphene lamp illuminates the scene, and 



72 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

they no doubt find in the inconveniences and miseries 
attending the meal a pleasant approximation to the 
horrors of country life. As for the other cheerful old 
pill who sleeps in a tent, he's got a grape arbor and vine 
minus leaves over him, and on those slats the neighbor- 
ing cats congregate and fairly startle the night. This 
brings out the Gusher's pack of five Scotch terriers, and 
if that nice old Dutchman doesn't think he's in the 
Adirondacks treed by bears, then he isn't a good hand at 
dreams. 

Notwithstanding these rural felicities brought right to 
our door by energetic Germans, Monsieur got a kink in 
his noddle the other day that his gentle Gusher needed 
air and country life ; that she drooped, and was pining. 
Therefore an early start was made on one of those hot 
days for a heavenly retreat on the line of a Jersey railroad. 
" We'll try it for a week, anyway," said he. " Every- 
body is going to the country ; it's the proper thing to do, 
and I think it will be very delightful." 

The cars were insufferably hot and dusty. Crossing 
some low, flat, marshy places, the first mosquitoes we 
had seen this year rushed hungrily upon us. We were 
landed at an exceedingly ornamental and gaudily painted 
depot, and conveyed by a topless wagon, under a broil- 
ing sun, three miles through sand that reached the hubs, 
to the sylvan retreat that should take the droops out of 
my dauntless spirits. 

The best bed-room in the house was mine. I could 
easily write my name on the ceiling, and I'm no Mary 
Anderson or Helen Barry. It was four breadths of straw 
carpet wide, two trunks and a wash-stand long. There 
were twenty-four little spectacle-glasses framed together 
and called a window, and there was a four-post bedstead 
with a feather bed in one corner, and a German plate 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 73 

mirror that represented me as a Chinese woman with eyes 
on the bias and a nose split up like a Connecticut clothes- 
pin, and riding straddle of an enormous rent ir one cheek, 
that turned out, on investigation, to be my mouth. These 
suicidal articles of furniture prepared me to find my two 
quarts of water in the ewer so hard that the soap curdled 
and floated on its surface. My one little wooden rocker 
had been fitted to something so narrow and contracted 
that a week's practice on a picket fence was necessary to 
use it with safety. 

But, then, Monsieur said, u I wasn't expected to live in 
my room," and I retorted, " I wouldn't be expected to 
live if I did." And we went down- stairs, w T here we were 
informed that we were late for dinner, but they'd do the 
best they could. It was just a quarter to one, and on 
hearing that announcement, the brave-hearted man fell 
down two stairs and shook the house to its foundation. 
We took hold of hands", determined to stand by each 
other through the perils of the meal with w T hich we were 
threatened ; and truly unity of purpose and determina- 
tion were needed when we entered the dining-room. 
Measly 'skeeter bars filled the windows and doors ; a 
damp, soggy piece of blue 'skeeter bar was stretched 
over the table ; the nose of the water-pitcher lifted it off 
the cut-up green tomatoes, but it rested gracefully in the 
nice, warm butter. We were brought two plates of awful 
bean soup, a section of something that looked and smelled 
like a bit of fried drum-head, but proved to be tripe, an 
oleaginous slice of boiled salt pork, some string beans, 
unpeeled potatoes, slate-colored coffee and a piece of pie. 

These articles w r ere disputed for inch by inch by the 
flies. The thermometer on a brass-handled sideboard 
stated authoritatively that the mercury stood at 98 ° ; the 
water was warm ; some bottled lager was sour (the beer 



74 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

man and the ice man had not arrived for that day). 
Leaving your correspondent, who has a lively turn for 
Natural History, to investigate the manners and customs 
of a plate of china that was sent to look after the pie, 
Monsieur went forth to investigate the surroundings of 
this delightful summer retreat. An hour went by. I 
sought my den above ; the chair was impracticable. I 
sank upon the yielding surface of the bed. What is it 
Tennyson says ? " Had I lain for a century dead, earth 
in my earthy bed," I couldn't have caught on to a more 
sepulchral, mouldy, musty smell than exuded from every 
pore of that dreadful couch. It was getting ready to 
rain outside — the flies just poured in. A variety of 
hot noises, the scratching of katydid hind-legs, the buzz- 
ing of a multitude of bumble-bees haunting a squash 
blossom that had ambitiously reached the little window, 
the far-off sharpening of a scythe and the clink of an 
anvil at a blacksmith's down the road, worked my nerv- 
ous system up to the jumping-off place, when the door 
opened and admitted Monsieur. I knew him in a 
moment, despite the changes time and trouble had 
worked. I recognized him at once, and claim great 
credit for my quick perception. 

The gallant youth had sallied forth in Saratoga blue 
flannel. He returned a gentle Jersey gray. The dust 
of the road had enveloped his once noble person ; but 
the sun and the heat and the dust had taken all the noble 
out of him. A livid light danced in his off eye under a 
place where a bull mosquito had bitten him. A baleful 
gleam of malice darkened his nigh optic under a dreadful 
wasp-sting. A bee had tended to his tender nose and a 
hornet had staked out a claim on his intellectual brow. 
We neither of us spoke — to souls whose covers are worn 
thin by much suffering a glance is sufficient. I rose, and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 75 

with one accord, animated by a single thought, we two 
seized the handle of the commonwealth gripsack. We 
two lit out, and through the dust and heat of three long 
country miles never flagged or drew foot till the delicious 
red and greenery of the variegated station struck our 
delighted optics. 

We slept in New York that night, and, with the help 
of Heaven and light of experience, we will pass every 
other summer night in the safe and comfortable precincts 
of a city home. 

And yet out in that doleful, uncomfortable Jersey cot- 
tage two millionaires and their families are passing the 
summer. A reverend doctor is giving the place an air of 
piety, and an actor and theatrical author are lending a 
flavor of iniquitous and riotous living to the neighbor- 
hood. A demijohn — damning evidence of guilt — with 
the actor's name on the tag, stood on the platform of the 
station as we came away. 

I wish 'em joy of it. They may have every feather of 
my bed ; they may have my rocker and the corrugated 
looking-glass. Give me my dear, sweet, city home, with 
ice enough to make a little North Pole of my own, and 
the joys of a summer in New York. 



POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



I want to call the special attention of savants to a com- 
bination of circumstances that ought to mean something. 
If played as a three-numbered gig without a saddle, I 
should say it would pay. On the morning of Friday last 
the Gusher was doing the suburbs, and dropped in to 
see George Waters, who keeps the "Woodbine"' up at 
Highbridge. He was showing her some alterations he 
intended to make in his establishment, and she was giv- 
ing him some architectural advice, when whang through 
the ceiling came a leg with a blue overall on it and a 
good-sized cowhide boot on the end of it. The room 
was plastered and kalsomined overhead, but the other 
side had no flooring ; and a carpenter walking from 
sleeper to sleeper missed his footing, stepped between the 
beams, and plunged through the length of his leg into 
the room below. 

Billy Birch would say, play the leg, boot and all ; but 
so much happened afterward that really one would have 
to let the boot go. Dropping in to see a busy house- 
keeping friend, she was found up to her eyes "doing 
up " curtains. They were stretched on immense frames, 
four layers thick, and she was bemoaning their tardy 
drying. " Set 'em up on end before the fire instead of 
keeping 'em in a horizontal position," said the Gusher. 
No sooner said than done. They were carefully raised 
on their beam ends, and ticklishly rested against the 
chandelier. Then a nice seance of scandal was begun. 
Madame knows it all, on both sides the Atlantic. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 77 

" He's going to marry her, is he ? " said she. " I'd 
like to know how he can do it. We'll set this last poor 
creature aside. But there's Lottie, Topsy's sister ; he mar- 
ried her, and she has two children ; all London knows 
that ; and Lottie knew all about him. Why, bless you, 
he was the lad in the Maccabe business ; you remember 
her, Canterbury Hall Villiers' sister, a pretty little thing 
with four children, and Maccabe adored 'em all. He 
had this young man doing his accompaniments for him ; 
but one day after dinner he woke from a nap, and seek- 
ing his wife, found the pianist had rather forgotten his 
position and got above his business. In fact, he was 
making love to his employer's wife, and then there was a 
time ; he, however, forgave her, and " 

Just here the big curtain stretcher came down, noise- 
lessly but swiftly. The Gusher and her friend were sit- 
ting side by side when the wet, starched lace swept like 
a cloud upon them. There was a moment's interrup- 
tion, and then those noble women burst through like 
a couple of stars, and sat calmly amid the wreck of 
Nottingham, waiting for further developments. Billy 
would have played both of us for all we were worth 
in the capital saddle ; but this was a great day for 
catastrophes. It devolved on the evening to lay out the 
day. 

The Gusher had got infatuated with the minstrels. 
She inveigled her young man into a pilgrimage up to the 
Cosmopolitan. There she was, Friday, pointing out with 
much enthusiasm the good things in the performance, 
when crash ! bang ! ! behind her, one of the iron pillars 
supporting the gallery dropped through the floor, just as 
the carpenter's leg did through the Woodbine ceiling. 
Expecting the gallery to swoop down on her like the 
Nottingham lace curtains, and not expecting to go 



78 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

through it as easily, she beat a hasty retreat ; but where 
is the policy-shop that will rig a gig out of those events 
to pay for the amount of mental anxiety and physical 
damage that dropped into Friday along with the legs and 
iron pillars ? 

But speaking of theatrical belief in Jonahs, and theat- 
rical superstitions, what a multitude of signs and omens 
the theatrical profession entertain ! The mystic number 
13 has a horror for any actor ; the iniquity of Friday is 
fully believed in ; an umbrella opened under a roof is 
sure disaster ; to sing a bar of " Macbeth " music is to 
invite the bolts of fate. 

The only able-bodied superstition the Gusher enter- 
tains is connected with ink and its diabolical significance. 
(How many persons will hold up their hands in pious 
acquiescence, thinking I mean the depredations com- 
mitted under this giddy trade-mark! No. The guile- 
less lead-pencil is answerable for these enormities.) I 
refer to the upsetting of ink. My first experience with 
it was many years ago, when, with a dress wet from 
recently spilled ink, I was called out of school to receive 
the news of a favorite uncle's death, and every death in 
my family since has been preceded by some accident of a 
like nature. 

Then, again, will I ever forget the grotesque nature of 
another dread experience ? It was at a hotel in Troy that 
the landlord, with a pallid face, hurriedly entered my 
room and begged me to go with his wife to the apart- 
ments of Mrs. , to whom it was necessary to break 

the awful news that her little girl had fallen over the 
banisters and been killed. The heart-rending duty could 
not be evaded, and with trembling limbs we betook our- 
selves to the stricken mother's room. She met us cor- 
dially and exclaimed, laughingly : 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 79 

" I've met with such a frightful accident ! Upset a 
whole bottle of ink." 

I don't know how we went to work to enlighten her as 
to the frightful accident that really had occurred ; but 

the first thing I knew, the unhappy Mrs. was in a 

dead faint, and the excited landlady had seized a bot- 
tle of cologne, emptied it on a towel, and was bathing 
the sufferer's head and hands, which would have been 

all very well if Mrs. had not been using the towel 

already to sop up the ink. 

It is not so many years ago that Robert Heller was 
leaving the Fifth Avenue Hotel one Saturday afternoon 
for Philadelphia. As he entered his carriage he encoun- 
tered the Gusher. 

" What luck ! " he cried. " You shall go with us ; I'll 
take no denial. I'll go write a note to Monsieur ; tell 
him I've kidnapped you, and he'll come on the midnight 
train. We'll have a gorgeous Sunday at Strawberry 
Hill." 

Suiting the action to the word, Robert turned and ran 
back to his parlor on the first floor of the hotel, while I 
remained at the carriage with Haidee. Another minute, 
and in the best possible spirits, he appeared and laugh- 
ingly exhibited his handsome white hand, the palm of 
which was covered with a huge ink-spot. 

" I've upset the ink-bottle all over the table in my 
hurry," he explained, and I felt a chill creep over me 
as I viewed the fatal ink. I would not go to Phila- 
delphia then, but promised to get there Sunday, and a 
dozen people can testify to my going up to the Fifth 
Avenue Theatre and being scolded for my idiotic super- 
stition about spilt ink. Sunday, I did not get to Phila- 
delphia ; Monday, Robert's audience was dismissed in 
consequence of his sudden illness ; and Tuesday night at 



80 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

twelve o'clock I got a telegram, saying, " Heller died at 
nine o'clock." 

Therefore do I nail down the ink-stands and tie in 
their stoppers, and confess I hold in religious dread the 
awful power of ink when spilled. 

There's a popular superstition that Joaquin Miller is a 
poet. I put up my claim to train in the same band. 
Listen to Joaquin's last and the Gusher's first, which I 
find copied : 

WAITING FOR HIM. 

BY MILLER. 

Over the mountains and down by the sea, 
A dear old mother sits waiting for me ; 
Waiting for me, waiting for me, 
A dear old mother sits waiting for me. 

Oh, waiting long, and oh, waiting late, 
Is a sweet-faced girl at the garden gate ; 
Over the mountains and down by the sea, 
A sweet-faced girl is waiting for me. 

LAYING FOR HER. 

BY THE GUSHER. 

Over the fence and under the tree, 
The speckled hen is laying for me ; 
Laying for me, laying for me, 
That patient old hen is laying for me. 

On another lay, in a different way, 

An indignant hen is laying for me ; 

With a tongue that's long, an arm that's strong, 

That wicked old hen is laying for me. 

Then again, that dense and opaque genius, Robert 
Browning, gets at it in his most obscure way. Hear 
him in 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 8l 

JOCOSERIA— PROLOGUE. 

Wanting is — what ? 

Summer redundant, 

Blueness abundant. 

— Where is the spot ? 

Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, 

— Framework which waits for a picture to frame : 

What of the leafage, what of the flower ? 

Roses embowering with nought they embower ! 

Come, then, complete incompletion, O Comer, 

Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer ! 

Breathe but one breath 

Rose-beauty above, 

And all that was death 

Grows life, grows love, 

Grows love ! 

And then listen to your Gusher, who quotes from a 
jocose poem she has got under way : 

WANTING NOW— WHAT? 

An atom of sense — 

Striking out, trying to hit the intense ! 

Seeking to write something, simply immense, 

— That is the dodge. 

Fooling the world, yet a fool all the same 

— Eternally trying the same old game. 

What of the Juniper — what of the gin ? 

Does it thicken the speech ? The story's too thin. 

Toxicate — intoxication. O Bummer, 

Pants worn all last winter must last through summer. 

Breathe but one breath — 

Alcoholic — and death 

Overtakes the rash fly 

That is lingering nigh. 

Thus he grows and grows, and every one knows 

When oats, peas, beans and barley grows. 

Now, for unadulterated idiocy, who's on deck with the 
boys any quicker than your Giddy Gusher ? 
6 



SOME AWFUL MOTHERS. 



Not very long ago I heard some cold-water colporteur 
say that the saddest spectacle on earth was a " drunken 
father." Perhaps there was a time when I might have 
indorsed that statement ; but I have seen so much lately 
of the "immoral mother," that the old man blind drunk 
is an innocent and enjoyable exhibition. The daughter 
is always an actress. Thank God ! the mother does not 
often belong to the profession. But at this time there 
are dozens of actresses whose wicked old mothers connive 
at the infamy of their daughters. They are not the poor 
black alpaca frumps of the green-room, who descant 
with gin-and-watery eyes and speech on the talents and 
beauty of that dear girl. This is a new crop — dressed 
within an inch of their lives ; connoisseurs in petit 
soupers ; epicures who delight in champagne luncheons 
provided by wealthy admirers of their daughters. 

They must be getting very plentiful, these awful old 
women. I encountered three of them lately in one day. 
It was on board an ocean steamer that I stumbled on 
Convenient Mamma No. i. Here she had been all the 
week witnessing her daughter's improprieties — unblush- 
ingly assisting the girl to lose the shred of a reputation 
she claimed. There she was, fully cognizant of the 
scandal already in the air — knowing perfectly well that 
this trip abroad, under the circumstances, was the most 
damaging thing her child could undertake. But she 
smirkingly lent her ancient countenance to the whole 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 8$ 

affair, and smiled on the girl's Lothario, like a Cheshire 
cat. And this was a baked-bean, brown-bread Boston 
matron, from whom a daughter should expect untiring 
vigilance and watchfulness, lest the New York wolf 
should prowl round the Massachusetts lamb. She had 
hung round the wings of a theatre while her profitable 
progeny sat in the star's dressing-room. She had seen 
the girl go in with the gentleman, when arrayed in the 
costume of his part, and emerge with the gentleman when 
he was ready to go home, and when the company were 
discussing the barefaced proceedings. She, the old hen ! 
saw no impropriety. She never counselled the silly girl 
to avoid further remark by some pretence of decency, 
and she sailed away content, knowing that she had 
helped on to ruin the tender feet entrusted to her 
guidance. 

It was a disgusting spectacle, and I had hardly got it 
out of my mind's eye when a similar one presented itself. 
In a stage-box of a popular theatre, attired in such 
gorgeousness of apparel as human wit and wealth can 
devise, and bad taste heap on one little figure, sat 
mamma-chaperoned actress No. 2. This mother was a 
peony of flourishing immorality. The gold trappings on 
her refulgent form looked like a spangle-dealer's show 
window. Several insipid youths danced in to hang 
round the young woman, and the old one made them 
very welcome, until of a sudden the burly individual 
who at present is the permanent basis of all the regalia 
darkened the box-door. Then mamma's administrative 
ability came in. She took the adolescent sprigs into 
her choicest confidence. To each one she imparted the 

information that Mr. wanted to see the dear child 

on a matter of business, and she adroitly slipped them 
out on an inclined plane of maternal anxiety and hospi- 



84 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

tality. Then she shrugged her shoulders and audibly 
rejoiced at deliverance from those insufferable cads — 
when a month before one of the insufferable cads was 
the mainstay of her establishment, and her " dearest, 
dearest boy." 

Wandering home under the April stars, I met a promi- 
nent manager, gazing dolefully at a remarkably hearty 
moon, hanging over the house-tops with a well-developed 
smile on its rotund visage. 

" I believe the confounded thing is laughing at me," 
he said. 

" It's not unlikely/' I replied. " It's not so full but it 
has taken in the latest news concerning your petted 
prima donna." 

And the manager groaned and inwardly vowed that 
the solar system should never be afforded amusement 
again through his foolishness. 

" Serves me right," he acknowledged. " I put the girl 
in a position to injure me. But for me she would have 
been humbly trotting home with her little hard-earned 
salary. I aided her to rise from the lowest grade to 
popularity and celebrity." 

And then I interfered and said " notoriety " was a 
better word. " Celebrity " she would never attain ; for 
the road the young woman had selected to travel led 
direct to loss of popularity, ability, and an early grave. 

" Don't blame yourself for her muddled career," said I ; 
" where's that old reprobate, her mother ? " 

For every sin in the lives of the three girls I have men- 
tioned, I honestly believe those three old women will 
roast in the hottest corner of Hades. Where was that 
mother when that No. 3 girl was a wife and mother? 
Did she counsel her daughter, out of her own experience, 
to find pleasure and pride in her home and baby ? No ; 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 85 

she led the wayward young thing to look at the peace of 
a decent life as a wretched fate ; to believe that cham- 
pagne and chicken salad with Tom, Dick and Harry, and 
orgies with young idiots in neighboring cities, and splen- 
did dresses and showy jewelry, w T ere the only desirable 
things in life. She saw her child fling away every ele- 
ment of earthly happiness, and take to every phase of 
reckless extravagance and fast living, without a syllable 
of protest. She publicly avowed her belief in the non- 
sense of a husband and a child for a woman who would 
live happily. When her daughter skipped off in a half- 
dazed condition with some crazy male companion, the 
old woman undertook to cover their tracks with those 
who had a right to expect their business contracts should 
be respected. Oh ! there will come a day of reckoning 
for these old recreant Tabbies — when, ruined in health, 
faded in beauty, poor and forgotten, the one-time favor- 
ite will spend her last days quarrelling with and cursing 
at the wretched hag of a mother who aided and abetted 
the follies that blasted the daughter's life. 

No matter how much a girl rebels at control, she 
respects the loving guidance she may complain of. I 
remember an instance that showed me that, however 
young a girl was, she has a sense of right and feels a 
contempt for any laxity of proper authority in her man- 
agement. This incident occurred many years ago, and 
the girl was not more than fourteen. The mother was a 
good, weak, God-fearing woman, who had a wholesome 
awe of influential and prominent persons. In the country 
town where these people lived, one of the most noted men 
was a clergyman huge in stature and very unclerical in 
his tastes. He contracted a habit of spending hours on 
the doorstep of this old lady, chatting all sorts of non- 
sense with the daughter. And this girl knew as well as 



86 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

possible that the whole programme was utterly wrong. 
The Bible-banger was married ; had children near her 
own age, and his conversation of an evening was about 
as secular as he could make it. 

However, the affair drifted on ; the parson kept com- 
ing, and the old lady kept out of the way. One night, 
however, she unexpectedly bounced upon the pair at the 
garden gate. The minister's arm was around the fright- 
ened girl's waist, and she was struggling to escape a warm 
embrace, when ma, en route from class-meeting, burst 
out of the bushes. The child felt her heart leap with 
delight, since now the Rev. Mr. Mushead was going to 
catch it. 

Not a catch ! The bumps of veneration and reverence 
on that pious old head wouldn't allow her to interfere 
with a pastor's sport. She made a deep courtesy, and, with 
an idiotic quotation from Scripture about there being 
" giants in those days," went into the house, while the 
girl, disgusted, filled with contempt for such maternal 
laxity, flung herself against the little gate and wept. Then 
when the Rev. Dr. Mushead asked her the cause of this 
sudden grief, the child fired up and told him what an 
old scoundrel she thought he was, and w T hat a blasted 
fool she knew her mother was. 

" Why, if I ever have a daughter," said the young lady, 
" and any religious pump with a wife and family comes 
fooling round that girl, I'll come out of the house and 
brain him with a water-pot." And suiting the action to 
the word, she seized the convenient article and dealt her 
reverend companion a clip on the nose that adorned the 
pulpit with court-plaster for three succeeding Sundays. 

Oh, these mothers ! What a deal they are answerable 
for! 



"BABY" LITERATURE. 



Every little while a batch of letters in some divorce, 
murder, or breach-of-promise case turns up and fills the 
public with astonishment at their fellow-creatures' idiocy. 
I suppose a hundred women in this city have written 
notes this week and signed 'em u Baby." That form of 
stupidity has a special fascination. In the name of 
common sense, let the McClean letters from Stapleton 
injure the Baby business. Our young friend Barwick 
stood more drivel of this kind than seems credible. He 
treasured up the Baby literature with an object, no 
doubt, for the gentleman is thrifty and has an eye to 
business. The young woman has money, if she has not 
brains. This remarkable suit for breach-of-promise, 
brought by a man, is not so ridiculous after he gets in 
the correspondence. Some compensation is due a fellow 
who gets such letters planted along his path in life, and 
were I on the jury I'd give the sufferer half the " Baby's " 
fortune. 

A stop ought to be put to this thing some way, and 
heavy damages may do it. You take a big fat old lady, 
a relic of the black alpaca period — you take a muscular, 
tripe-like female with a wart on her nose — find a whop- 
ping greasy damsel with freckles, strabismus and bandy- 
legs, and bet your moroccos, if you can entice either one 
of 'em into writing you a love-letter, it will be signed 
" Baby " to a dead certainty. 

I have a funny case in mind that illustrates the state- 



88 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

ment. Some years ago in my employ I had the ugliest, 
most appalling specimen of the genus woman one ever 
beheld. Loweesa was Dutch, toothless, humpbacked, 
marked with the smallpox, very cross-eyed and about 
fifty years of age. Her first acquaintance with English 
was made with a family of six boys who swore like 
pirates ; consequently Loweesa swore cheerfully, uncon- 
sciously, and originally. Her profanity used to remind 
me in its construction of the innocent old man who went 
to the tavern for the first time and returned home 
anxious to use the pretty words he'd picked up. Look- 
ing round for something to swear at, he saw the door 
open and broke out with : " Lord all Hell, wife, shut the 
door by a damn sight ! " 

Loweesa used to start off like a clucking hen with a 
" cuss-cuss-cuss ke damn." So she came in one day, after 
I had known her about six months and began : " Cuss- 
cuss-cuss ke damn, Missis, vas du gedanken ? Ich habe 
ein shutz, und das fool vas goming mit Sunday night." 
Then it came out that the lover was a Yankee, and had 
written Loweesa a love-letter that demanded an answer. 
Loweesa's triumph over profane English hadn't been 
great enough to whip reading and writing, so she kindly 
intrusted the conduct of her correspondence to me, and 
the dictation went on as follows : 

" Dell him he vas a nice feller and I geeps gompany 
py him ; und dell him I hopes to see him Sunday, und to 
gum early py de house, und pring his razor " 

" His what ? " 

" Der Gott im Himmel — ja — dem corns has me like 
crazy, und Schmidt bin ein doctor ; ein doctor for ein 
pferd." 

So the letter to the horse doctor progressed. She sent 
her love several times. She assured him of her intention 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 89 

to geep his gompany, and when we arrived at the matter 
of signature I was about to put down " Louisa." 

" Nein, nein ! " exclaimed the enamoured horror ; " das 
is nicht forstanza ! Ich bin sein Baby." And I had 
strength given me to look that old pirate in the face and 
write her down " Baby." 

I should not leave the subject without telling you some- 
thing of this remarkable courtship, which resulted in a 
happy marriage and a pair of twins. 

Schmidt came every Saturday night, all winter, when 
the ensuing conversation always occurred, without any 
variation : 

"Goot evening, Schmidt." 

" Good evening, Loweesa." Silence for a time. 

" Vat villst du haben, Schmidt, lager or schnapps ? " 

" Well, Loweesa, I'll take a glass of beer with you, I 
guess." 

" Hast du dim razor gebracht ? " 

" Yes, Loweesa ; how is them corns of yours ? " 



," was Loweesa's fluent and truthful reply, 

after which the surgical operation took place, and perfect 
silence, broken only by the lifting of a pitcher and the 
clinking of glasses, reigned in the kitchen till nine, when 
Loweesa would say, " Veil, Schmidt, das vas dime you 
pin going. Good nicht." 

And Schmidt would take another very squeaky kiss, 
another drink, and depart. In the spring I had the 
pleasure of fixing up one of the most dreadful bridal 
spectacles I ever beheld, and the following year Loweesa 
made her appearance in company with Schmidt, who had 
taken a day off for exhibition purposes. They both 
carried bundles, and Loweesa exploded in the old fash- 
ion : 



9° THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" Cuss-cuss-cuss ke damn ! Missis, vas du gedanken ? 
Schmidt und I have zvvei twins/' 

Sure enough, when they were unrolled there were two 
of the ugliest babies in the world. 

"And what have you named the darlings?" I asked. 

" Diese bin eine girl, das vas Mary, und dieser bin 
ein knabe, und he vas Yram." 

" That's a strange name, isn't it ? " 

" It's the same name turned around," explained 
Schmidt. "My wife wanted 'em both named for you." 

To this minute I don't consider I'm accountable for 
any wicked ways I may have. Any woman with two 
such goblins named after her as Mary and Yram Schmidt 
are to-day, should not be judged harshly. 



THE WATCHMAN'S GHOST. 



" That's a beautiful Bible passage," said old Mrs. 
Crofut to me — "that about ' sleep that knits up the 
ravelled sleeve of care.' It just heels and toes me when 
I'm clean frayed out." 

"And oh," said the Gusher, to her friend, the manager, 
" do put air pillows and head-rests into a few seats while 
you are making alterations in your theatre. Give me a 
rest and a place to sleep nicely in a theatre and I'm 
happy. I've been at it since the palmy days of the 
Bowery." 

I'm old Freligh's ghost. 

During Hamblin's administration one of the theatre 
watchmen got a notion of sleeping in one of the third 
tier boxes. He run in a little cot bed, and there he was, 
snug and comfortable ; but one night he got too much 
Hester Street whiskey on board, and instead of lying 
down in his cot bed he just tumbled out over the rail and 
came whizzing down to the foot-lights. They found him 
impaled and quite dead the next morning on one of 
the ornamental spikes that finished the stage off on each 
side. After this, with astonishing regularity, for many 
years, the watchman's ghost was seen. 

Dear old George Fox, of pleasant memory, was doing 
his first edition of pantomime, and I went to see it with a 
party of friends for the fiftieth time. During the even- 
ing they withdrew, and I went to the back of the box for 
a quiet sleep. Every one on the stage supposed I had 



92 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

gone with the rest. The curtain fell ; the lights were 
put out ; the audience dispersed ; the company dressed 
and went home, and still the Gusher slept. About three 
o'clock I awoke, and where on earth or off it I was, was 
beyond my ability to tell. 

I prowled about my narrow quarters and felt of the 
windowless walls that enclosed me in their sides. A 
damp, mouldy smell pervaded the place, a stifling feeling 
oppressed my lungs. " Now," said I, " can I have chipped 
in at the game of life, and been planted without knowing 
it ? " All at once I struck the window ; the lace curtains 
and the velvet rail reassured me. I peered into the dark- 
ness. Of a sudden a glimmer of light from the front 
shone on the midnight blackness of the place. I let out 
a beautiful cry of distress ; the third and fourth tiers 
took it up ; the flies sent it to the paint frame ; the pit 
caught it on the bounce, and a dozen nooks and crannies 
of the old theatre chorused my effort. 

It was the style in those days to wear white fur cloaks. 
I was a perfect pioneer to style. Arrayed in a white fur 
cloak, I stood in the proscenium-box and watched the 
effect of my howls. The baize centre doors swung back, 
and, holding aloft a bull's-eye lantern, there stood Fre- 
ligh. He threw a line of light hastily up and down, and 
then, as it fell on my admirable proportions, he just cast 
his lantern down, uttered a brief cuss-word, and fled. 

Then I was mad and lifted my voice in good earnest. 
Such a pow-wow as I made, sounded like Proctor in 
"the Jibbenanoisay, ,, and Jim Webb as Macduff rolled 
into an elocutionary whole. Dear old Joe Dowling was 
a police captain then, or a newly-made justice — I forget 
which. Anyway, he was on the street when Freligh 
piled out asserting that the watchman's ghost was pulling 
up the benches inside. George Worden, Joe Dowling, 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 93 

and Dan Kerrigan came to the rescue. They got a gas- 
lighter, two candles and a kerosene lamp. Timidly the 
big doors swung back, and the brave party, headed by 
Freligh, advanced two or three steps inside. The gas- 
lighter I took for a rifle, and cried out to them not to 
shoot, so that we scared each other pretty equally. At 
all events, I was escorted home, and received my thirty- 
second lecture on sleeping in theatres. 

But it's a great blessing, and next to the corner in a 
fat red maroon cushioned pew in church, an orchestra 
seat in a theatre is the place for dreaming. Why 'twas 
in an orchestra chair that I went on a grand tour as 
manageress of a syndicate as was a syndicate. I did 
" Antony and Cleopatra " with Susan B. in the title role ; 
I did " My Wife's Baby " with John Raymond ; I put 
on " Glin Gath " with George Alfred Townsend ; I did 
" Painless Dentistry " with Dr. Colton as leading man. I 
went for the new pieces and produced " The Ace of Clubs," 
with Captain Williams, and " The Ace of Spades," with 
Mike Murray ; " Rank and Riches," with Lord Mande- 
ville and Jay Gould, and a splendid pantomime (original) 
entitled " Down in the Mouth ; or, The Adventure of 
Jonah in the Whale's Society." 

Ah ! then I had a clown — Talmage — and what a 
daisy clown he made ! In my delight at his success I 
got thoroughly waked up — and then I went on thinking 
of Talmage after my dream was over, and a report I had 
read of his sermon last week, in which he entreated his 
Christian hearers not to treat God flippantly. Now, 
that was a cheerful request from the Boss Flipper. I 
would like to call Tally's attention to the flippancy of 
the only two sermons I ever heard him preach. He 
opened the first occasion by assuring us that God was in 
our midst — that Christ was on hand. " He is here," 



94 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

screamed Talmage ; " He is entering now." He pranced 
down the platform with extended arms ; he met an air- 
drawn Saviour, shook his invisible hand, escorted him to 
a big arm-chair, and saying " Sit down, Christ," waved 
his big claw at the empty piece of furniture, and triumph- 
antly exclaimed : " There sits Christ ! " Now, if you 
can flip us anything more flippant than that, let's hear it. 
On the second occasion, my dream-clown executed a 
sword-dance about his stage, showing how people dodged 
the Word of God. (i Why," said he, " some persons hear- 
ing the voice of the Redeemer, beat it off. They treat 
the Saviour like a dog. They say, ' Get out, Christ ! ' " 
And Talmage stamped and kicked as if a snarling cur 
was barking at his heels. I tell you when things are 
straightened out and the world strikes its proper groove, 
my dream will be fulfilled and my syndicate will boast 
the greatest clown on earth — Talmage of the Taber- 
nacle, the champion flipper of flippancy. 



THE DRUG CRAZE. 



Perhaps some people think the proper place to see 
exhibitions of faith and spectacles of belief is within the 
portals of the sanctuary. Not at all. If you would 
look upon truthful believers, go to a drug-shop. There's 
hardly a worshipper in our churches but has doubts on 
some article of faith ; but, oh ! the credulous confidence 
of the pothecary patrons. It's astonishing. 

The Gusher went into the drug business early. She 
discovered the yearning of the human heart to take pills 
and powders at the unripe age of six. She opened a 
drug-store under the front stoop of the family residence, 
and sold powders made of flour, sugar and ground cinna- 
mon for one pin apiece. The infant ills that succumbed 
to this course of medicine having given way to another 
form of disease, requiring, in the early druggist's opinion, 
heroic treatment, your Gusher compounded some diabol- 
ical powders of starch, indigo and washing-soda. Eight- 
een children partook of twenty-five of these laundry 
powders, and every doctor in town was busy that night, 
when, more or less sick, the Gusher's patients waked the 
echoes with their disturbed little insides. Twenty-five 
pins and a hundred curses, a mass-meeting of infuriated 
parents and a proposition to lynch me, was the result of 
that day's drug business, but it did not shake my belief 
in the hankering of the human heart to take things. 

A man on Broadway has met a great want by putting 
up little medicine-chests that are filled with numbered 



g6 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

bottles of pills. Accompanying this box is a book 
wherein you read : " For general lassitude — indisposition 
to do anything — desire for perfect repose, take No. 14 at 
10 a.m., and follow up with Nos. 19 and 46 between 
2 p. m. and 6 p. m., returning to No. 14 at bedtime," etc., 
etc. 

" For reluctance to rise and tendency to lie down 
during the day, take No. 51 in moderate doses until 
exhausted, and continue with Nos. 30 and 65. (Bottles 
can be replenished singly at any of our agencies), " etc., 
etc. 

This is a noble work of art, but it isn't as attractive as 
going to the drug-store and laying in large bottles and 
small doses of all sorts of medicaments. 

Having lost a small dog down a coal-hole in front of a 
drug-store, I went in to get an adhesive plaster that 
would not only draw out the dog but enable me to stick 
to it after its recovery. And while the proprietor sug- 
gested another course of treatment, and went down in 
the cellar to bring the dog, after his prescription, I sat 
on a stool and watched the customers. 

Great Caesar's ghost ! what a gang. I noticed that no 
matter how small, young, and green the youth who 
waited on 'em, they called 'em all " Doctor," and the 
airs of those medicated runts were insufferable. I made 
it very pleasant for one particularly obnoxious little 
wretch by saying : 

" Hand me one of those almanacs, bubby. I may as 
well improve my mind." Now, if I had bought a seid- 
litz powder of that lad after that speech, he would have 
said, " Let's have an end of that terror," and chucked in 
an ounce of arsenic. 

I made believe not to see the malignity with which he 
gave me a Liver Pad almanac and Cherry Pectoral cir- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 97 

cular. A large lady, with an entire upper and under set 
of store teeth, smiled with unflinching confidence in 'em, 
and simpered as she examined some tooth-powder : 

" Do you recommend this, Doctor, as being perfectly 
harmless ? I imagine Sozodont is injuring mine ; they 
feel sensitive to the touch after using it." 

I could not restrain myself, and blurted out : 

" Then be careful how you handle 'em when you take 
'em out." 

Only that the Directory was tied up I would have 
been brained on the spot. The enraged woman ordered 
a box of Brandreth's pills, two capcine plasters, a pint 
of hamamelis, a bottle of citrate of magnesia, one 
dozen rhubarb compound fracture pills, three ounces of 
senna, and ninety-six drops of croton oil, and dashed 
out. I don't believe she is so mad this morning. I 
hope her anger has left her, and that she has forgiven 
me. 

The woman that took that woman's place wanted some 
anodyne liniment, an electric belt, a liver-pad, Kendall's 
Spavin Cure, and Dixon's Condition Powders and Orien- 
tal Cream. She in turn gave room to a woman who 
wanted Wilbur's Cod Liver Oil, Aunt Sally's Corn Cure, 
Pond's Extract, Jacob's Oil, Warburgh's Tincture, four 
bottles Kumyss, half a pound of ten-grain quinine pills, 
a pint of colchicum, the same quantity of iodide of potas- 
sium and an electric hair-brush. She went home to have 
a good time, and I aimlessly read the pretty words on 
the jars— " Bi-carnal Bromide," "Col. Clynth.," " Assa- 
foetida,"* " Cammomile," " Slippery Elm," " Flax-seed " 
— is there anything more comfortable than a flax-seed 
poultice ? I think a flax-seed poultice and a hop pillow 
would make a beautiful bed. 

You remember Louisa Eldridge's adventure with a 

7 



98 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

mustard poultice, don't you ? It's a good many years 
ago, when Louisa was young and charming, Captain 
Eldridge and she were stopping at a country hotel, when 
in the middle of the night the Captain was taken with 
cramps, and Louisa slipped on a dressing-gown and 
went down to the porter, who took her to the kitchen, 
where she manufactured a rousing mustard poultice. 
She ran rapidly up stairs that the blamed thing should 
not cool. She flew along the passage till she saw the 
dim light over the transom. She flitted into the room, 
she rushed up to the bed, she pulled down the spreads, 
she yanked up a night-gown and she clapped a red-hot 
mustard plaster on the pit of a stomach, saying, " That 
will relieve you, my dear ! " And a great big strange 
man sat up and cursed her like a pilot off Sandy Hook. 
Poor Louisa ! She had cramps herself before she gained 
her own room, and fainted on the hearth-rug, while the 
man with the mustard poultice went raging round to find 
his unknown assailanf. 

I don't know how many funny things I should have 
been reminded of in that drug-shop if the proprietor had 
not come up the trap with the lost dog. But I would 
like to ask my simple sex what on earth they use such a 
lot of trumpery medicine for ! How on earth can they 
believe in so many quack nostrums ? Once in a while 
you find a man given to trying all sorts of drugs, but it's 
the women who support the apothecaries. No wonder 
they are the weaker sex. I'm amazed they have any 
strength at all. 

I knew one gentleman, as bald as a pound of butter, 
who is always trying everything. A lady friend fell out 
of a hammock this summer and sustained injuries that 
rendered a very complicated prescription necessary. 
This gentleman was going into the city, and the lady 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 99 

asked him to kindly leave the prescription at Caswell's 
and have it sent out by messenger. 

" Certainly/' said the old Curiosity Shop as he took it ; 
"what's this for ? '" 

" To promote the growth of the hair," said the lady. 
" I think sea bathing is making my hair come out." The 
gentleman took the recipe and trotted off. Three weeks 
after he said : " By the way, Mrs. , how is that pre- 
scription doing for you ? Do you find it of any benefit ? 
For you see I took the liberty of having it put up for 
myself, and I have been rubbing it into my head faith- 
fully for twenty days and I can't discern a hair as yet." 

Oh, Moses ! How did that woman control herself to 
answer ? I should have exploded like an overcharged 
rocket. 

And while I am on the subject of hair-growing, let me 
give my dear sisters a word of warning — particularly 
those belonging to the dramatic profession. Don't use 
vaseline on your face — vaseline is made from petroleum. 
Petroleum makes the hair grow without a doubt. I 
notice a downy growth on ladies' faces just now that 
I never did before. I meet a score of women a day 
that have moustaches — beards that would give a barber 
actual work. I believe vaseline is responsible for the 
trouble. Theatrical people buy pound cans of this sub- 
stance and dash it on at night to remove " make-up ;" 
the result, nine times out of ten, is a pair of Dundreary 
whiskers and a military moustache. 

You know the story they tell to advertise vaseline 
pomade, that it was discovered by a workman on a rail- 
way who was entirely bald. This man used to trim the 
lamps in which petroleum was burned, and wipe his 
fingers — like the tidy creature man always is — on his 
hairless conk. Of a sudden he discerned hair, actual 



IOO 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 



feathers, sprouting in the spots where his greasy fingers 
had been. Presently he had tufts of foliage on his head, 
and thus were the hair-growing properties of petroleum 
discovered and incorporated in vaseline — which beats 
old Dr. Graham's Unguent for forcing the beard in six 
weeks. 



THE STORY TOLD BY THE CACTUS. 



There are two subjects on this earth that are as inevi- 
table and unavoidable as Time, and they can be dis- 
missed from every one's mind as easily as Johnny's sum 
is washed off his slate. 

If a man should know for certain that some time dur- 
ing his life he was going to get his leg smashed, and it 
would have to be taken off, that inevitable operation 
would embitter every w T aking hour and fill his nights with 
mares. 

He knows that, near or far, there is surely advancing, 
with ceaseless steps, the hour when his special box will 
be carted to him, and his special hole in the earth will be 
dug, and into the two he will be put for his last final 
abiding place. He forgets that all the time. He never 
gives that more than a moment's thought. 

A mother suffers the agonies of death almost in bring- 
ing a child into the w 7 orld. Prayers are said in the 
churches for her recovery, and amid thanksgiving and 
praise she gets through a very tough experience. One 
year from that time the very same inevitable trial awaits 
her a few months off. She's as cheerful as a cricket and 
dismisses the unpleasant subject from her mind. Where- 
as, if the woman has had a cancer removed and there is 
another one come, and a second operation is imminent, 
she never knows one instant's peace, though the beastly 
thing occasions little or no pain, as is sometimes the case. 

The human mind can always forget about birth and 



102 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

death. If the fate of everybody was to be ultimate 
injury of a painful but not fatal character, we should be 
a nation of weepers and wallers — unable to disabuse our 
troubled minds of that horrible destiny for one single 
moment. And yet the dread hand that we are shocked 
to see laid on those around us, is raised and waiting 
above our own heads ready to strike the inevitable blow, 
and we hardly ever give it a thought. 

" It's that which may be in another life that frightens 
me," says the Colonel, who is popularly supposed to be 
afraid of nothing. 

" It's the awful uncertainty about the actual ending of 
this one that troubles me," I reply. 

Beecher and I know all about hell. We don't believe 
there's an ounce left over from this life to fix up another. 
Notwithstanding all the dreadful reports of heaven made 
by different denominations of religious teachers, I ain't 
afraid of going there, because, possessing a very con- 
formable spirit, I can make myself comfortable and con- 
tent almost anywhere ; but it would be a very reassuring 
discovery if some one would find out that in our graves 
we stop knowing. I've got an awful idea that as long as 
the vital spark furnishes life to the hair on our heads and 
the nails on our fingers and toes, that dreadful intelligence, 
that consciousness we possessed when walking round, is 
only bound in icy fetters, and may be making agonizing, 
intangible protest against the inroads of decay. 

Somehow I feel as if there was something in me that 
was never going to blow out. I tried a fainting fit the 
other day ; those around me said I was wholly uncon- 
scious for quite a time. I wouldn't want to print the 
experience of my thinking machine during the period 
when I was apparently as senseless as an oyster. I can 
never get it out of my head that vegetables are not sen- 






THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 103 

tient beings. I mash a potato as gently as possible that 
I may not hurt its feelings, and the tenderness with which 
I shell peas would teach a total stranger that I held 'em 
in different esteem than the common run of mortals do. 

I had an experience in England once that has more or 
less affected my relations with the vegetable kingdom. 
Kew Gardens, just out of London, were very attractive to 
me. They are wonderfully stocked with the rarest and 
strangest plants the earth ever produced. I've spent days 
in 'em. I've sat beside the fly-catching plant, and fooled 
it with a straw from a whisk-broom to my heart's content ; 
but it found me out, that smart old plant. I'd touch it 
slyly far down in the heart of its gloomy blossom. Snap 
it would shut up, and begin feeling round with its stamens 
and pistil for the supposed fly — no flies. I'd go off and 
come back unexpectedly when it had set the trap again. 
This time I'd drop a thread with a seed attached into the 
unsuspecting blossom ; up it would shut again. But the 
third time it was ready for me. No more playing crows 
at home with me. It actually winked as I tried the old 
straw, as much as to say, " I'm no agricultural ass." And 
he wasn't. 

The cactus house was particularly interesting to me. 
Gardeners here who think they know what cactus means 
because they have a prickly old green spine with a few 
gable ends growing on 'em, should see the cacti of Kew. 
Great Caesar's ghost ! What a show they plant on the 
earth ; solid legs like a real man, which go up and sup- 
port a huge bulbous body, that in turn throws off very fair 
arms and a head not to be despised. There they were, 
hundreds of them standing in huge pots together. Some 
looked as if they were fighting, and others might have 
been engaged, so lovingly did they lean toward each 
other. They were six and eight and ten feet high. 



104 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

I was on very good terms with the tribe, and one after- 
noon I sat down in the greenhouse on a tub and lazily 
contemplated 'em. There is a warm, oppressive silence 
in a hothouse that always makes me sleepy. I leaned 
against the pleasant legs of an old he cactus and went 
off to sleep. The long twilight of an English evening 
passed away ; a nice fat British moon rose over the 
premises, and I awoke. Where on earth I was I couldn't 
tell ; but gradually my senses trooped back. I remem- 
bered the afternoon and that which I had done in it, and 
I started to leave the conservatory. 

Not much ; the big glass door was securely locked. I 
had got to sleep with the cactuses, and I went back and 
told them so. Will you believe it if I tell you that one of 
them laughed? I don't suppose you will ; but it did. I 
went back to the place where I originally fell asleep, and 
to that particular sympathetic plant 1 related the situa- 
tion. Again I leaned against his comfortable old legs and 
again I went to sleep. It might have been an hour later 
when something touched me on the head, and I looked, 
and behold, my gentleman cactus had dropped into a 
sitting position, had placed one of his lately raised arms 
upon my forehead, and was bending his nubbly green 
head solicitously over me. 

" Are you comfortable ? " he said, in a choked and 
strange tone. 

" Perfectly," I replied ; " but astonished at this altera- 
tion in your attitude and personality. " 

" It is given me at the full of every moon to resume 
for one hour some of the attributes I possessed when in 
the flesh some thousand years ago." 

" Good heaven ! " I cried. " Were you ever a 
real-for-true man, such as you resemble vaguely in 
shape ? " 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 105 

" I was," replied the cactus. " I belonged to the Bronze 
Age, was a bronze bandit king of wondrous fame, but 
devoured by bad passions and evil intentions. My war- 
fare with man was carried on by the use of spears and 
lances, and every awful spike you see upon my body 
represents some injury I did a fellow-creature. Just as 
many of these prickly spikes as you see sticking out of 
my body, just as many are sticking into me. I was killed 
in battle at last and buried by my fellows. I hadn't 
been a week underground before I felt a pulpy, pushing 
sensation in my head. With constant persistency I 
poked through my cerements and the helmet in which I 
was planted, and struck at last the sunshine and the 
showers. You can never imagine the uneasiness of grow- 
ing until you are resolved into a vegetable — the obstruc- 
tions met by your roots, and the uncertainty attending 
the portion of your person projected into the air. 

" Every evil characteristic T had as a man burst forth 
upon my bulbous body as an excrescence. Every cruel 
blow I ever struck bristled as an ever-pricking spine upon 
my sides and limbs. I had one hope of escape. The 
forests about me were drinking in the heat of the sun, 
preparatory to a long sleep in the ground, during which 
they w T ould become coal, be discovered by man, and on 
account of the heat they had drunk, which was slumber- 
ing in their bosoms, it would be carted once more upon 
earth, and get, by the process of burning, again into the 
atmosphere and enjoy out-door life in some winged 
form. 

" Alas ! Along came one day some cursed collector of 
botanical specimens. My peculiar shape attracted atten- 
tion. I was dug up and transplanted a dozen times. I 
believe for every great wrong I did my fellow-creatures 
when a man I have to be pulled up as a cactus. It's only 



106 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

yesterday I heard the head gardener say : ' That old 
fellow is getting too big for his tub.' 

" Now, if you could get an American capitalist to buy 
me, I could expect, when he burst up and his conserva- 
tory was sold, I might be knocked about, destroyed as a 
cactus, and get back in some less dreadful and comfort- 
less shape. Here at Kew, under the governmental pro- 
tection, I am likely to last for centuries." 

I promised that poor plant I would see Vanderbilt or 
Gould about him, and try and get him an ephemeral posi- 
tion in America. 

I must have dozed off during some of his repinings, for 
at six I was roused by hearing men talking outside. I 
suppose you will say it was all a dream — that I slept 
straight through. Much you know about it ! When I 
looked about the cactus had resumed his position. I 
found a pair of overalls and an old straw hat belonging 
to the gardener. With the aid of a rake I put the hat on 
my poor cactus friend's head. I ripped open the overalls 
behind and pinned them together about my unhappy 
friend's legs. And to this day the men working in the 
cactus-house at Kew will tell you how the American 
woman was locked up there all night and amused herself 
dressing up the plants in old clothes. 

No wonder, then, that your Gusher is troubled about 
the effects of planting, and is giving a good deal of her 
attention to the new idea of cremation — with a view of 
stopping her eventual growth underground. 



OUIDA. 

The woman who writes a note or a novel that rubs the 
bloom off this old plum, the earth, is a worse thief than 
the gonoff who prigs one's supper. I say woman, for I 
can't call to mind a male writer belonging to the icono- 
clastic school of Louise de la Ramee, the novelist 
Ouida. 

I laid down " Othmar," with a devout hope that Maria 
wouldn't be unfortunate enough to read it. Maria is 
morbid and sentimental, and gets her facts from fiction 
and her views of life from romances. 

" A blamed unhealthy, unwholesome volume," said I. 
" It's no wonder that certain circulating libraries of good 
moral character won't allow Ouida a place on their 
shelves." 

Sure enough I got a letter from Maria next week. She 
spoke sadly of an approaching birthday. " There is 
little to live for after thirty," wailed she in inky spasms. 

" She's struck ' Othmar ' for a certainty," thought I, as 
I went on. 

" Time is so unmerciful in its treatment of women," 
sobbed my friend. " Its beastly hand strips us of every- 
thing. It gives us nothing." Oh, doesn't it ? Perhaps, 
Maria, you have not had the rheumatism. Yes, my 
friend Maria has just read " Othmar." She has risen 
from the reading imbued with a sense of discomfort — of 
impending disaster — of unreal and unnatural misery. 

Do you want to know the sensation created in me by 



108 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

the reading of that book ? It was one of pity for the 
woman bilious enough to write it. I can understand just 
how Ouida writes these disappointed, embittered books, 
for I was on deck once when she was garnering material 
for a three-volume outpour of gall and bitterness. 

It was a good many years ago, when Ouida was begin- 
ning to make a noise. She was in London, but unrecog- 
nized by the literary fraternity. In fact, I doubt if she 
would make a ripple if she were there to-day. Ouida is 
much more popular in the United States than in England, 
pour cause. 

Well, as I say, it was a good many years ago, and Miss 
Ramee, who had been materially helped in fortune by 
Harry Stone, a banker in Paris (who at one time was one 
of the howling swells in New York), was in London, and 
head over heels in love with a good-looking, thick-headed 
young man, about fifteen years her junior. 

I had a friend who had furnished a pretty house on 
South Audley Street with all the majolica pots Howell 
& James had in stock. 

What a regular old cockney shop it was, to be sure ! 
And when I found her one day in the dumps, I assured 
her it was Dresden shepherdesses, majolica cacti, cloi- 
sonne, blue enamel and mediaeval designs in pottery, 
acting directly on her cerebral diatessaron, and indirectly 
on her diaphragm filter. 

We went to Devonshire to study shepherdesses that 
were not attached to porcelain, and bulls that were not 
in a china-shop. But before we went we rented the 
house — all but two rooms — for transient occupancy, to a 
tall, raw-boned woman with a perfectly shocking shock 
of yellowish hair. 

The woman had one of those featureless faces that in 
young or old are never the faces a man tries often to kiss. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 109 

She was a daisy to look at, and very shortly we found she 
was a very field flower in worldly wisdom. 

She lived at the Langham Hotel, I believe ; but she 
installed the thick-limbed, thick-headed, thick-skinned 
young man in South Audley Street. Rented with the 
house were two capable servants with the usual comple- 
ment of eyes and the usual limberness of tongue. 

Every time we forsook the hills of Devon and visited 
the china shop we heard a ton of scan, mag. 

" That woman his ha hass," said the cook. " She's a 
fetchin' o' chops through the street hin 'er hown 'ands. 
She comes to the kitching hand stirs hup possets for 
that there lob-lolly boy. She's an 'oly 'orror with 'er 
coddlin's." 

And indeed it was ridiculous to see the worship laid at 
a very sizable pair of British boots by this devoted and 
ugly woman. The hulking young man sniffed with evi- 
dent weariness at the incense continually burned before 
him. He laid around and smoked and read Bell's Life, 
and along about the middle of the day the madam 
arrived with whitebait in a tin can and strawberries in 
pottles. 

The maid-of-all-work said the matured siren let down 
her hair, sat on a hassock, and read him sheets of written 
paper all about himself. This went on for two months, 
when one day she packed her hero's old pants carefully 
in a multitude of boxes and went off to Italy, taking him 
with her. 

The lad had taken a fancy to something in the china- 
shop, and his inamorata learned from the maid that it 
had been purchased at Howell & James'. Your Gusher 
was in that establishment when the yellow-headed dame 
came in. Remembering each other's faces, we began to 
talk of the South Audley pots, and speedily duplicated 



110 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

a majolica jar that seemed necessary to Ichabod's hap- 
piness. 

" So you know Ouida ? " said the manager, as she left 
the department. 

" Ouida ! " blurted I. " Which ? where ? when Ouida ? " 

"Why, that's the novelist, Louise de la Ramee," ex- 
plained the man. " She's going to Italy, and has bought 
lots of things of us to take with her." 

Great House of Parliament ! I was knocked. I scuttled 
home as fast as I could and went through the lately de- 
serted rooms looking for souvenirs of the departed novel- 
ist — one of the hairpins flung out when she let down her 
back hair— one of the sheets of written paper she read to 
her young man — for I had read " Under Two Flags M 
and was an enthusiast. 

Naturally, then, I never let fall an opportunity of learn- 
ing about Ouida. A year later it was known that a young 
man, on whom she spent loads of money and lavished lots 
of love, had used her very badly, and I found that the 
adolescent calf occupying the pedestal in South Audley 
Street was the party. Ouida shut herself up with a pack 
of dogs, and wrote a burning, blazing novel, in which the 
bare bones of treachery, hypocrisy and deceit were picked 
with cannibalistic relish. 

I forget the name of that work, but you felt as if you'd 
been lunching in the morgue after you'd read it. 

Here comes this " Othmar " with its doctrine of a 
thirty-year-old hell to be endured by all women. 

Her blessed heroines are of two sorts — maddening 
beauties who fade at thirty and find the world at an end 
after having had a few glorious years of it, and sweet, 
lily-like creatures — very brainless — who, exposed to the 
fascination of some impossible man, die of love for him, 
while he romps round with the Blowsabella. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. Ill 

There's not the slightest doubt in the minds of those 
who have tried it, that a man's arms are the greatest 
things in the line of necklaces yet discovered ; that no 
solitaire known to Tiffany ever gave such satisfaction to 
the female ear as the lips of a sinful man whispering a 
fond and beautiful lie into it. I don't say that he doesn't 
believe it at the time ; but it turns out a lie all the same. 

But for any chump of a woman to think that when her 
neck has lost its roundness and she has lost the arm- 
necklace, that when her ear has lost the pinkness that 
won the winning tale of love, the game is up, and there's 
nothing left to live for — that's simple idiocy. 

The love of man is a very good thing, but it is not 
all. When it tumbles out of the nest it doesn't smash all 
the other eggs. 

Ouida says Time " takes everything from a woman and 
gives her nothing." 

It's a blamed no such thing. Time should give her a 
clearer head, a stouter heart, a braver spirit. It should 
make life worth the living by giving it constantly increas- 
ing knowledge, and by depleting the stock of selfishness 
with which we all go into business. 

It's only to the brainless that Time is a terror. I ask 
nothing to conquer the evils of age with but something 
to do, and the ability to do it. 

It's a pleasure to watch the world and see how it uses 
us all. It's a very nice world, not at all made up of 
Granvilles and Berties and Othmars and Idalias and 
Napraxines ; not at all like Ouida's novels, but a most 
interesting, delightful place. I know of none better. 



LIFE IN A FLAT. 



That which is everybody's business is nobody's busi- 
ness. Certainly no one attends to it. I would be very 
glad to hear this morning that a mob of justly indignant 
citizens had taken the paper-shell builders in hand and 
were making examples of them at the lamp-posts. In 
riding up and down the Elevated Railroad I have had 
an opportunity of seeing a great deal of the building 
going on uptown, and it's a safe prediction to make, that 
the Buddensiek accident in a still more dreadful form 
will occur over and over again. 

There is no power would induce me to live in the 
places where several of my friends hang out in joyous 
unconcern. In some of my late wanderings I have tar- 
ried for the night in aesthetic flats and new hotels. There's 
a house up Broadway, much patronized by theatrical 
folks, and with a well-known lady in the profession I 
have passed a good deal of time there lately. They are 
hard at work this week papering over the cracks in the 
walls on the third and fourth stories ; but I have studied 
them and I know what an unsafe barracks it is. The 
building is very young ; in fact, it is teething ; but it is 
cracked from garret to cellar ; cracked and re-cracked ; 
clocks on mantels won't go without wedges of cham- 
pagne corks tucked under to make 'em level on the 
cracked slabs. Half the doors won't shut ; all the cor- 
ners of the window-mouldings and door-frames have 
nice little bits of ornamental whirligigs set in them, and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 113 

they are falling out in every instance. I wouldn't live 
in that hotel if they gave me the entire receipts of the 
house. It's a trap. 

Two of my newly married female friends have Queen 
Anne style of flats. The decorations are delightful. 
They have a little elevator — two-fat-women wide and 
one-tall-man high. A little 4-by-9-inch boy, weighed 
to the earth with a peck of brass buttons, slowly lifts me, 
when I call on Melancthon and Maria, to the fifth floor. 
The blamed thing has stuck with me lately between the 
third and fourth landing. I've discovered the reason. 
The little shaft has shrunk and the little box has swelled. 
Bubby carries a bottle of Jacob's Oil, ostensibly for his 
back, that he says is strained by buttons ; but when we 
strike the third floor I begin to smell it particularly 
strong, so I know he uses it on the elevator. I read the 
other day some one's affidavit of the efficacy of this prep- 
aration, and the wording satisfied me the patient is a friend 
of Maria's or Melinda's. " I have been pulled through 
a very tight place by its use," wrote the man. He's been 
up in that Hyperion flat-house elevator, sure. 

When I am dumped by Buttons at the fifth floor, u I 
perceive before me," like Desdemona, " a divided duty." 
There's a landing the breadth of a farmer's boot, and 
two little doors not able to honestly stand side by side, 
but stuck in like the letter V ; the right is Maria's and the 
left is Melinda's. I go to see Maria usually, because it 
comes natural for me to do the right thing ; but it 
amounts to the same. I sit in her parlor and I hear Me- 
linda in her kitchen telling the cook that the cold mutton 
will be good enough for dinner with a can of peas. Wild 
horses could not drag me in there after that. Between 
the parlor and the bedroom there's a little plaster tube 
which runs from the basement to the scuttle. It's for 



114 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

air — so the builder says. So it is — to air all the dirty 
linen of the twelve families who live under the roof. I 
slept with my right ear about a foot away from it one 
night, and I was heartily sorry for every one of 'em. 

Flat No. i is occupied by a widow with one son, and 
he is a loafer. Far into the night that ruffian nagged 
and threatened his poor mother about a couple of hundred 
dollars she had received during the day. Flat No. 2 
has a jealous wife in it ; Flat No. 3, an invalid crank. 
The third floor contributed one of those nervous house- 
keepers who can have convulsions if the laundress blues 
her wash in the wrong tub, and a pair of poker-playing 
gentlemen. The fourth floor takes a cornet-playing young 
man as a boarder, and the other family have a daughter 
who is keeping company with the most demonstrative 
youth that ever sparked a girl. 

This is the sort of thing the tube conducted into my 
ears for three mortal hours : 

" What d'yer want 'er thet money berfore nex' week ? 
Lem-me use 't, will yer ? lem-me turn it over ? Yer 
freeze onter yer stamps wuss 'en ever yer did. It's all 
very well for you to tell me you wasn't out of the office 
to-day. I've got things fixed so's I know. How comes 
four pin-holes in your shirt bosom instead of two ? I 
pinned down your Albert scarf this morning, just here. 
Now look ; there's two more holes, an inch and a half 
away. Oh, you forgot ? You did run around to Lafay- 
ette Place and have a Turkish bath. Indeed, you're sure 
it wasn't some other place ? When I am gone you will 
realize what I have suffered. That medicine don't seem 
to be doing me no good. I think it's a cancer. All 
great people have cancers — Charlotte Cushman, Charles 
Sumner, Fanny Fern, Ulysses Grant and me. You know 
that beef-dripping from yesterday, and every scrap of 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 115 

that turkey-fat, was sold by that wretched woman for 
soap-fat this morning. It's enough to put one in their 
grave. I have endured as much as a martyr with that 
awful, unprincipled thing. The clothes-wringer is broken, 
and half the clothes-pins are left on the roof. I raise 
you ten. What's that ? Three queens. Confound the 
luck ! Make this a jack-pot. Give me two. Pass me 
a match. Well, here goes. I look toward you. Hold 
on. I come in on that. i Toot-ee-toot. Toot-ee-toot.' 
(First bar of Mabel waltz.) 

" My sweetest own, I really must — [clinging kiss]. 
Got to be at the office at nine. How I will think of you 
all day. And in an hour from now sweet dreams will 
give you to my waiting arms. Just here I will fancy 
your little head— put your little head there for a moment. 
Oh, you darling ! I'll kiss you for that." (Sque-e-sch — 
another one of the old-fashioned kind.) 

" If you were to talk all night I could not let you have 
that money. That's the second yellow hair in a fortnight 
I've found on your overcoat. In my weak condition — 
that girl shan't stay in the house another — 'Tain't what 
you hold, it's what you draw. I'll take four this time. 
Toot, toot-ee-toot ! Now, darling, I must go just one 
real sweet one." (Fearfully elongated kiss.) 

Now what do you think of that over and over again 
for hours ? 

The closet they dine in is the other side the tube, and 
a perfect concert of noises accompanies each meal. The 
fires in those traps always occur in the elevator shaft and 
start right up it ; the stairs are all huddled close to the 
elevator. If ever there's a flame starts down stairs 
that loving couple will be fried in their own fat, that 
poker party will draw their last card, the invalid will 
find her dream of a coffin realized at last, and the latest 



Il6 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

yellow hair will be scorched unknown on the bad hus- 
band's overcoat, for the Hyperion Flats will go in the 
twinkling of an eye. That is its ultimate fate, if it is 
not rattled down this summer by the blasting of a big 
rock next door, that it is necessary to remove so another 
flat-house (the Satyr) may be put up. 



PREVALENT PERFUMES. 



How happy shall I be when the catarrhal reign of old 
King Pneumonia and Queen Diphtheria is over ! The 
druggists have expended their invention and nastiest 
drugs in concocting evil-smelling ammunition with which 
to repulse the enemy. At the Madison Square, the other 
night, a dapper man sat beside me who was eating for 
his cold those diabolical lozenges called " Coldine/' 
There are moments when my friend Caswell, under the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, breaks out in the cellar with an odor 
of assafoetida simply paralyzing ; but Caswell's cellar is as 
a tract of land belonging to " Araby the Blest " compared 
with the man who chews Coldine lozenges. This patriot 
emitted during the evening this awful smell every time 
he spoke, and a woman, with a nose, sat beside him and 
seemed to be insensible of the dreadful state of her escort. 

Directly in front of me was a large, portly woman who 
warmed up during the evening, and got quite excited, 
and applauded frantically, and every moment started a 
flavor of a beautiful plaster she had planted between her 
shoulders. This was wafted to me continually. During 
an entr'acte a gentleman came down to exchange felicita- 
tions with her about the play, and he was redolent of 
Jacob's Oil and arnica and opodeldoc and a few little 
things like that. This concert of sweet smells rose in 
the auditorium like incense, and I made up my mind 
that the unique nose I have prided myself on so long was 
more of a nuisance than an ornament. 



Il8 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

But the great trial of the evening was to come when 
an expiring shrimp of a dudeiet dropped into a seat on 
the other side of me. He had read the works of Mich- 
elet. That savant, in " La Femme," says it is a woman's 
duty to make up like a bouquet, to have one perfume for 
her hair, and another for her hands, and a third special 
extract from some chosen flower that shall always distin- 
guish her person. The gentle dudeiet, feeling his case 
resembled that of La Femme, had got himself up after 
this fashion for the theatre. Only, " Sweet spirit hear 
my prayer ! " he had selected those refulgent odors, 
Ylang-Ylang for his delicate digits, patchouli for his 
ambrosial bang, and he laid aside a spring overcoat that 
seemed to be steeped in musk. I could forgive him the 
Ylang-Ylang and condone the musk, but patchouli is a 
criminal offence that should have its penalty along with 
other lesser crimes. 

There are persons who can be affected by odors in un- 
pleasant ways. I know one who has a violent headache 
half an hour after she gets a whiff of patchouli. I am 
not one of that tender-built brood, but I do get mad over 
such a concatenation of evil smells as I fell into the other 
night, and I was telling next day of my sufferings to a 
mischievous friend. 

"Now," said she, " I have a gentleman admirer much 
given to strong perfumes, and I have hit upon a plan 
that is working beautifully. I tell him that the founda- 
tion of most scents at present is Alkazinine, and that, 
however charming they are at first, they speedily resolve 
themselves into this primal factor, which is very unpleas- 
ant and unhealthy. I'm a graduate of Vassar, and he 
regards me as a miracle of learning. I gently dab a little 
benzine on him somewhere, and he begins to complain 
of the dreadful smell. ' That's alkazinine,' says I, and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 119 

the poor man vows he'll stick to cologne, which won't 
stick to him long. So you see I am breaking up one 
man's bad habits." 

Hereafter, I think I shall take an atomizer with a little 
benzine in it to theatres, and contribute to the gang of 
odors that frequent those places. 

Some people look to me like smells, and remind me of 
plants. I look about a house at a first-night and think 
in an instant of a variety of things that never grow in a 
theatre. There's Joe Howard and John Hoey and Tom 
Doremus. Their polished, egg-like heads always seem 
to be inviting some old hen to be sitting on them, and 
instinctively my thoughts run upon barn-yards and 
Brahma Pootras. The cotton-pod top-knot of Stephen 
Massett is always accompanied by a vision of a nigger in 
a hickory shirt just about to pick him. Lancaster looks 
like a milk pitcher of catnip tea my mother made me 
drink once. A tailor on the Strand fixed up his window 
one autumn with pantaloons of mixed tweed goods, and 
in the top of every pair he had a branch of Scotch 
heather. I always think of that shop-window when I 
see Harrington. There's a very fine-looking banker at 
all first-nights with a magnificently dressed wife. I can 
always see an invisible label on his back on which is 
printed " Extract of dandelion and rhubarb." Very 
nasty to take, but it does you a lot of good. Why 
should I always associate Madame Ponisi with a bunch 
of lilacs ? I never remember to have seen them to- 
gether. Yet always beside her, in private life or on 
the stage, I see a stately bush crowned w r ith nodding 
branches of purple lilacs, and the odor is as distinct as 
the vision. 

I can readily understand why, in the presence of the 
Marquis de Leuville, I always thought of Madison 



120 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Square Garden and the three rings — because he is the 
greatest show on earth. But why should I smell copal 
varnish every time my dear friend Thompson passes me ? 
I know why Willie Winter always reminds me of a clove 
— because he's little, got a big head, and usually comes 
into a theatre after a drink. But what on earth makes 
me think of a yacht every time I see Jim Collier, and 
smell the salty air from off the sea as he bears down the 
aisle ? Is it because of his breezy way, or on account of 
that picture a railroad paper got out of him with a sailor 
hat on ? No, it can't be that, because that picture was 
printed within a year or so, and I've had the yacht under 
full sail beside Jim ever since I can remember. I won- 
der if other people have the same associations. 

When Charles Foster, the famous medium, was on his 
legs holding seances in this town, I asked him once how 
he recognized the spirits he professed to see as related 
to this or that member of a party sitting at his table, and 
he said everybody had for him either a color radiating 
from every outline of their anatomy or an odor that dis- 
tinguished them ; that the degree of relationship between 
the living and the dead was determined for him by the 
shade of color or the strength of the odor ; that about 
me he always saw a deep shade of heliotrope. Two or 
three dead aunts turned up a shade or two lighter. A 
croupy young cousin, who had a communication from 
my grandmother, was just faintly tinged, while grandma 
had the same shade as my aunt, and I hope it was 
becoming to the dear old lady ; it isn't to her grand- 
daughter. 

I think I met a woman similarly afflicted with myself 
on the cars the other day. She had a lad with her, and 
all of a sudden she broke out with : " I think your Aunt 
'Liza will be to home when we get there. I've been 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 121 

smelling molasses gingerbread all day." Revolving this 
mysterious utterance, it can only be accounted for in this 
way. Heaven knows I don't want to expect anybody 
who is heralded by the smell of Coldine lozenges, and I 
trust I shan't sit near any more warm porous-plasters. 



DOWN EAST. 



and Mr. Paine " of Worcester "m" ? ^ ^^ 
Plenty of me „' to-day T ' e Intern s /^ ^ 
speaking of their partnership with p , Stat6S ' who ' 
great work, say «? and God ^T,^" 06 fa S ° me 
self is not confined to rh. , * g °° d ° pinion of 

genuine ^TntZ'l^Zt J ** •** 
a journey to Boston is th* 7 . rank airs > 

the incipient crank «,.-„»=. At « hat P 1 ** 
a deeper shade, and a , ^ JZT * ^ °" 
Bostonian virulence vVorcester « rages with true 

assI^eSrBeat"' "" "•*** "* ■*■"* 
occasion to ^SSTw^S^Tf '" 
House, and I don't know when I h ve h ^ ^ 
amused. ave b een so much 

superseded ^.rrcX^SeSc' T * * 

thing tO do With itt nnnni; -. f • ° C ° VCT ^ SOm e- 

hack and Wd [ S h *' " " ^ ^ ■ its b ™ 
December nu^"^ ^ « ^*«t The 
- of ever, ,e„ Worcester wlen^"!^^ 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. I23 

Dinner occurs near the centre of the day down East, 
and at six and later they take a nondescript meal called 
a supper-tea. Hot griddle-cakes have the call at this 
feed. They must cook a thousand cakes every night at 
that Bay State Home. 

The pasty-looking ladies of that hotel meandered down 
about seven with their Centuries, adjusted their glasses — 
it's incompatible with intellect to have good eyesight — 
and opened on cakes and syrup. I sat opposite a most 
aggravated specimen of the genus. 

A putty-complexioned woman, who set her Ce?itury up 
against a milk-pitcher, bent her eyes on a chapter con- 
cerning. " Molecular Circumspection/' and blindly shov- 
elled in the cakes. A passage of great abstruseness 
would absorb her. She would pause in the good work 
and abstractedly poise a forkful of buckwheat and 
molasses in mid air ; recover, and feed herself with a 
gulp. She was simply fascinating. I couldn't leave off 
watching her. I asked the waiter if the funerals from 
indigestion took place in the house, or if they sent the 
bodies home to the friends. And he told me the cakes 
were not immediately fatal. They generally lingered 
long enough to pay their bills and leave. 

A certain class of sporting people have, with a few 
exceptions, passed away. Such horsemen as Hiram 
Woodruff, such old sports as Tom Battelle, are long ago 
dead ; but in Worcester there lives a patriot named 
" Pug " Wesson, in whose muscular frame and rollicking 
face glow the fire and fun that made the sports of the 
olden time vastly superior to the specimens of the pres- 
ent day. Take the Dwyer brothers of this racing period 
and the Golden brothers of the Mystic Park. There 
isn't a horsehair on their heads. They could call on the 
Episcopal Advent Conference and pass themselves off as 



124 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

country clergymen, so unlike turfmen are they in appear- 
ance. But you take Wesson and put him into clerical 
black, with a white choker and gold-rimmed spectacles, 
a volume of Watts' hymns in one hand and Scott's Com- 
mentary in the other — you would never ask him where 
the text was going to be, but sing out at once : " Hello, 
old sport, what's this disguise worn for ? " 

He's horsey, he's doggy, he's fighty, he's bully, from 
his iron-grey cropped head to his active feet. He's a 
record of the turf and ring, when there was a turf and 
ring. It's a pleasure to sit in the little old-fashioned bar 
and talk over real sporting times opposite a fine steel 
engraving of Heenan taken before he went to Europe, 
and surrounded by quaint old colored prints of race- 
courses, the Epsom and the Derby, and lithos of the 
famous mares Flora Temple and Lady Suffolk. 

Yes, amid the bean-baking, cake-eating citizens of 
Worcester, there are some very good things in the way of 
men. I heartily enjoy their companionship, but I'm 
mighty glad to get back to New York. We're a very 
human gang here, and mighty few of us are troubled with 
cranks, or strain ourselves to make an impression. To 
have a good time seems to be about the size of our usual 
aspirations. Putting on airs is a business that occupies 
a very slim number of the community. 



AT THE INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION. 



The supremacy and the idiocy of man are nowhere so 
strongly demonstrated during the year as at the Autumn 
Industrial Exhibition. I go up and look at the crunch- 
ing machines for eating cobblestones, and the Goliath 
looms for weaving wire fences, and I feel like leaning 
up against the first old man as a sick kitten does against 
the kitchen stove. Then I strike an old pump with a 
patent unbreakable corset-steel, or a healthy idiot with a 
needle-threader, and I want to scalp him as he stands. 

The man who invents an article to meet a necessity of 
his fellow-creatures, and the man who invents something 
to enable him to provide for his own necessities, are 
two distinct animals. I wandered about the Sixty-third 
Street establishment one evening, and out of the hun- 
dreds of inventions I didn't see more than a dozen that 
I wouldn't have been ashamed to have fathered or 
mothered, as the case may be. A variety of men have 
come to the conclusion that a portable Russian bath is 
one of the stern necessities of our checkered existence. 
One Teutonic individual has evolved a chiffonnier that 
opens, takes apart, comes down, spreads out and takes 
in till it assumes the proportion of a vapor bath. A seat 
is hung in, a lamp screwed on, a flap turned up, your 
head stuck through, and after a week of preparation, 
along about Sunday, if you are industrious and have 
good luck, you can take a bath at home about half as 
well as you can abroad. 



126 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

A Yankee got to thinking out the same problem. He 
took the regular old tub and ran in a pipe at the side, 
perforated with holes to keep up a spray inside, and he 
hung over the top a rubber sort of a counterpane with a 
hole in it where you were to come through while you sat 
up in the bath. Over your shoulders you are to wear a 
sort of campaign cape, such as the Plumed Knights sport, 
and all you need is a torch to complete you for a politi- 
cal boomer. I can't think of a more senseless pair of 
inventions, except it be the sanitary efforts of a lot of old 
chumps to wring money out of you for traps to make 
your sewer-gas reach you with more ceremony than it 
will if left to its own way. One dear old gentleman has 
originated a glass bulb that seems calculated to show up 
any impurities in the gas, and to prove to you, if you 
watch it, that you get a full supply. 

I suppose a year ago I should have said that there 
were no more ways of building a surprise bed unless you 
elaborated my idea of a combination stepladder, churn 
and bed that I thought out last winter. But now at the 
Industrial I stumbled upon an innocent fire-place. The 
mantel was draped with plush, and on its shelf rested a 
variety of bisque and majolica ornaments. In the midst 
was a framed picture of Henry Ward Beecher, and his 
features were wreathed with theological smiles as he 
gazed at the well-filled trunks of a Parian marble 
bather about to take a header. The ancient inventor of 
this surprise party whisked away the plush lambrequins 
and looked me in the eye to watch the .general effect. 
There was a clash of springs, a sound as if Belva Lock- 
wood was chuckling over an electoral vote, and down 
before my astonished eyes dropped a ready-made bed. 

u Now, then," said I, " what becomes of the cannel- 
coal fire in the grate ? " And then I was told the grate 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 127 

must be like the stove of Col. Sellers — an affair of red 
glass and a candle. I fairly tore myself away from this 
ingenious invention that seemed to promise a still further 
change of base, and was fascinated by the ugliness of 
two old hens who were rivals in advertising dress-cutting 
systems. 

One of these monstrosities had yards of cloth checked 
off into sections to be scissored out and sewn together 
and warranted to fit the slimmest or fattest female in the 
city. The other was a system comprising a square com- 
pass — one of those wooden things with glass phials of 
water bedded in 'em and a pair of dividers. I never 
saw so much machinery, and all to accomplish so small 
an object. A hay-cutter hasn't so many attachments and 
movements as this dress-cutter, and the unearthly ugli- 
ness of the woman who tended the machine drove me 
wild with delight. 

" Now r ," said I to her, with a view to having a little 
fun out of my evening, " I have just been at the booth 
of a Mr. Palmer, who has a lovely face-powder, and with 
great stupidity that man has provided himself with a very 
plain young lady as assistant. If he had only secured a 
lady with your complexion and features, the success of a 
cosmetic used by a person so beautiful would be assured." 

That blind old female pill simpered and smiled, and 
took it all in like an evening breeze. I tell you, my gen- 
tlemen friends, if you ever want to say a sweet thing for 
any base purpose to an ugly woman, and hang back 
because you think there isn't enough worm on your hook, 
fling her out ; it's something wonderful how they will 
catch on. I thought there w T as money in gambling that 
I'd be snubbed for my outrageous kidding. Not for an 
instant. She smiled on me like a Cheshire cat, and said 
she had noticed that girl and thought Palmer was stand- 



128 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

ing in his own light. And I nearly burst with laughter 
as I crawled away and fell on dear Father Fairbanks' 
scales and found I weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, 
which was a rough awakening from a dream I had of 
being aesthetic and fragile. 

Passing a lot of nicely assorted doors, set in good solid 
frames, I saw a glass pane lettered, " Almost human 
intelligence/' This was a condition I had been seeking 
in the blessed monkey up at the Park, and Jo-Jo, the dog- 
faced boy, in the Bowery. So I stopped and investigated 
it. On each door was a brass tube, and you could take 
that door and give it a bang like one of Macy's shop- 
girls, and it would go on a dead run till within five inches 
of the jamb, when, as if arrested by a human hand, it 
would gently, but firmly and noiselessly, go quite shut. 
This is a boon to mankind. So many people dwell in an 
atmosphere of clashing doors that this invention will 
prove a God-send. And if this brass tube can only be 
put on some young men I know it will effect a revolu- 
tion. It lays a firm hand on a fellow when he has gone 
just far enough, and brings him up with a round turn. 
It checks him in his mad career, and gently shuts the 
door on him in a manner not to be denied. It's a daisy, 
and I ordered a gross to be sent down to me at once. 

" What is home without a mother ? " sang a chicken to 
me, from an incubator. It knew more about it than I 
did, and so I told it, though I stopped and looked into 
the business that seemed to have robbed a hen of half 
the pleasure of life. I wish I could have presented that 
scene to the north eye of a speckled Dorking I know in 
Connecticut, who is always laying on my remorseful soul. 
It was my business to chase and duck and drench that 
unhappy fowl when she made a nest and began to sit, as 
she would on a china door-handle. If her fond heart 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 129 

could be made to understand that a little cotton-wool 
and a handful of charcoal could do the weary work of 
weeks in a few mechanical days, she would think less 
hard of me ; and, by George ! I never wilfully injured 
the feelings of a hen. 

To turn from life to death is a much shorter step than 
one thinks. I withdrew my fascinated gaze from a shell 
through which a ragged little chick was dazedly picking, 
and w T as confronted by a new thing in gravestones. Of 
a properly unhealthy color, something like an air-tight 
stove in its shape, there stood a number of white zinc 
monuments and headstones. " Sacred to the memory of 
Piltha Anee, etc.," I read in the place of Excelsior, or 
Eureka, or Radiator. The noble inventor had got ahead 
of me. I did intend to file a caveat this week on my 
Aunt Susan's raised biscuits. As a material for tomb- 
stones they are vastly superior to white zinc. It is a dis- 
couragement to death and should be opposed by the 
undertakers — this new 7 idea in gravestones. Let intending 
suicides go up to Sixty-third Street and see those monu- 
ments. It will reconcile them to life and disgust them 
with the consequences of their crime. Let them be told 
that all suicides will have zinc headstones erected over 
'em, and it will do more to stop the practice than making 
it a misdemeanor punishable with imprisonment. 

I noticed with pleasure a falling off in the number of 
scroll-saws usually exhibited, and a consequent diminu- 
tion in those remarkable racks and frames and toy rock- 
ing-chairs produced by them. There are not as many 
coffee pots dispensing samples of their productions as 
there should be, and that pleasant person who had a 
waffle-iron in operation every evening at last year's show 
is not with us this fall. Perhaps he found the exhibition 
unprofitable. Women used to walk round, get a waffle 
9 



130 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

with their cloak on their arm ; put their cloak on and go 
get a waffle ; turn it the furry side out and go get a 
waffle ; hand it to a friend, look cross-eyed and go get a 
fourth waffle out of the confused baker. 

Poor man ! I pitied him almost as much as I do Pur- 
sell. I often watch the sweet-scented old dames who 
patronize his Broadway establishment. They go across 
from Lord & Taylor's and Arnold & Constable's at two 
o'clock lunch time. Pursell sets out a counter loaded 
with all kinds of cakes. One of those fine ladies with a 
coach and two men on the box outside will eat her way 
'round the store. I have seen one devour four cream 
cakes, a bun, five chocolate eclairs, two meringues and a 
doughnut, and placidly point out with a sapphire-like 
finger three modest ginger-snaps and one cooky as the 
extent of her lunch,- pay four cents and walk out with a 
dollar's worth of truck in her wicked old stomach. 

Up at the fair it's the same way. A woman way up in 
society, rich enough to buy up the building, paid twenty- 
five cents in my presence the other night for a little tin 
box of something to remove dirt from all fabrics, and she 
put one box in her pocket, another in the hands of her 
attendant, and took the third from the unsuspecting man 
who wrapped it up for her. 

Said I, " Will that stuff remove all unpleasant substances 
from clothes ? " 

" It will," said the man — "grease, pitch, paint, var- 
nish ; it will extract any unpleasant substance from the 
clothes. ,, 

" Then," said I, " chuck a bucketful on that old woman, 
and we'll have her dancing in a flannel petticoat here 
while the band plays the ' Rogue's March.' " 






A REAL HOME FOR THE AGED. 



It's very seldom you see a Jew beggar, for that race 
takes care of its own in the noblest fashion. The hos- 
pitals, the magnificent orphan asylums, and the various 
homes their charity keeps going, nurture and protect the 
sick, the poor and the old so thoroughly that only occa- 
sionally do you see a Jew in need. 

I went to the Jewish Home for the Aged recently, and 
my earnest recommendation to all my friends is to get in 
proper condition at once for admission to that institution. 
You have got to embrace the faith and be sixty years old 
at'least — that's all for us girls, and in return see what you 
get : A nice bed in a commodious room in a fine, large, 
luxurious house ; five meals a day ; three suits of clothes ; 
a half-pint of whiskey for every twenty-four hours ; all 
you can smoke ; wine two days in the week for dinner, 
and beer two days ; a couple of hundred pounds of the 
best coffee made for you every month ; a two hours' out- 
ing every day, and once in two weeks a whole day, and 
twenty-five cents for car fare, if you have friends you care 
to visit. 

Mr. Haine, the superintendent, told me many amusing 
stories of his experience with the one hundred and fifty 
aged people he has to look after up at 105th Street. A 
very old Polish Jew applied for admission lately. The 
very first thing they do with new-comers is to bathe 'em 
no matter how clean they may be. This old patriarch was 
in a frightful condition. 



I32 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" In you'll go to the bath three times,'' thought Mr. 
Haine, as he deliberated which part of the open lot in the 
rear he should use to burn the Jew's raiment, when it came 
off. 

He led the way to the bath-room, but at its door the 
dirty old Pole revolted. He would not be washed. The 
superintendent explained that it was a rule — an imperative 
condition of his admission. 

"I have lived eighty years without taking a bath, and I 
won't begin with a foolish custom at my time of life," said 
the Pole, and he picked up his bundle and trudged off. 

But Mr. Haine has got one hundred and fifty clean old 
men and women polished up till they shine. They have 
nothing to do but keep themselves in order, and they fairly 
glisten. The order issued by the directors of this institu- 
tion to those having it in charge, is to make the inmates 
happy. The filial affection of the Hebrew race is excep- 
tional, and in their management of this place the love 
they bear their own fathers and mothers crops up. " Make 
those lonely old creatures comfortable. Do for them as 
we would wish some one would do for our parents if we 
were not on earth to care for them/' said a Jewish lady 
connected with the Board of Directors ; and that is the 
rule on which the place is run. 

If there is such a person in the world as a rich man or 
woman who has found the married estate comfortable, do 
let him or her endow an asylum for aged married people. 
The Christians have no such place. Now, the distinctive 
feature of the splendid institution on 105th Street is this : 
it does not part the Sarahs and Abrahams who have 
journeyed through the shadows of poverty together and 
reached their hospitable doors hand in hand. No, thank 
God ! The poor old withered hands are not unclasped. 
They are assigned their room, where everything is kept 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. I33 

in a state of delightful cleanliness. The two little three- 
quarter beds stand close and lovingly together. The 
two big easy rockers each side of the polished plate glass 
window 7 have only a little stand between them, handy for 
granny's knitting and grandpa's pipe. Their troubles are 
past, their future assured, they are in that blessed Home 
where nothing will ever part them till that unseen, view- 
less hand that is reaching slower or faster for every one of 
us is laid in undenying summons on one or the other. As 
I looked at couple after couple w T ho had reached this haven 
of rest, I felt my heart swell with thankfulness to those 
wise ; generous people who have fostered this charity. 

Is there anything sadder than the fate of a man and 
wife who have stuck together till they are old and feeble, 
to be separated at the last ? 

"I'll take care of father," said a man to me one day, 
" if mother will go and live with my sister." 

That man thought he had sat down on a hornet's nest 
when I began in my wrath to abuse him for his inten- 
tions. 

An old wife misses the daily growl with the old man. 
She needs the bother his superior foolishness occasions. 
She would be lost without the care he is and always was 
to her. No, God bless 'em ! If the people love each 
other long enough to reach helpless old age together, 
keep 'em together, ye sons and daughters, if you have 
to take in washing or go out sawing w T ood to do it. 

Somew T here in heaven there is a saint whose name on 
earth was Leo. She founded this asylum, on Seventeenth 
Street, years ago, that now flourishes on 105th Street 
to-day. I went and looked at the noble face of this 
noble woman in a picture, and took her features well 
to heart, that I may call on her the first thing after I 
climb the golden stairs. 



134 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

I'm all the while thinking what I shall do when I get 
to heaven. Its resources, as set forth in the pulpit, are 
not very extensive. They understand the requirements of 
woman, I have no doubt. That verse stating that there 
is no " marrying or giving in marriage " shows conclu- 
sively that terrestrial affairs have guided their manage- 
ment of celestial ones, and we girls are going to have a 
much better thing hereafter than we have had hereto- 
fore. But that other statement, " they toil not, neither do 
they spin, ,, alarms me. As a cherub, of course I can't sit 
'round, and how I'm going to exist without occupation puz- 
zles me to say. I remember, when a child, having a long 
talk on this subject with old Aunt Hannah, as industri- 
ous a woman as ever lived. 

" I dunno, child/' said she. " Parsons is onsarttn on 
that pint ; but I want them knitting needles put along- 
side me in my coffin, partly becos I may get a chance to 
use 'em, an' partly becos I don't want 'em spiled by the 
gals pickin out nuts wid 'em." 

A year after Hannah took her last stitch, and all the 
neighbors' children went over to see the faithful old col- 
ored servant who had been our confidante and adviser 
in many a tough time. I looked at the knotted black 
fingers clasped on her bosom. Some one had put a few 
white flowers in them, but they didn't look natural. I 
went to the broken work-basket in the corner of the room, 
where Aunt Hannah's knitting lay as she had dropped it. 
A half-finished little red stocking for the youngest child 
was set up on the needles. I stuck the ball of worsted 
on the points and put the whole business in Aunt Han- 
nah's hands in place of the white blossoms, which were 
laid beside her wrinkled cheek. 

An instant after this alteration was made the members 
of the family came in, and one after the other they broke 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 135 

down as they looked at the knitting work going to 
heaven in Hannah's hands, and realized the stockings 
they were losing. And Joel Hawes, the parson of the 
period, took the knitting needles for a text and preached 
a sermon on faithful servitude and the wages paid for it 
in Zion that was unusual for its tenderness and sym- 
pathy. 

Hannah was planted, needles and all, for I explained I 
had carried out one of her last requests. And when 
Gabriel calls all up to begin, the little red stocking will 
long ago have dropped from the rusty needles, but those 
four wires in her bony grip will tell the story of her life- 
long, loving industry ; and if there's any knitting in 
heaven Hannah will get in her graft and show 'em what 
a Connecticut colored woman can do. 



THE PLAN OF THE BOOMERANG. 



I have been observing Professor Gleason and his 
methods, and I come to the conclusion that his is the 
most successful form of government for man as well as 
beast. The introduction of that cunning little upper- 
lip strap that yanks half the wearer's head off when he 
hoists his heels would make the marital condition twice 
blessed. 

The plan of the boomerang is the one on which to 
build a happy home. Once let a man know that the 
stone he throws will come back and break his own head, 
and bricks will soon cease to fly. If you mend your hus- 
band's trousers with pins, you won't be sat on in a hurry. 
Let these men once learn that to make things unpleas- 
ant for you will be to hurt themselves, dear women, and 
you've got the pull. The family horse will come down 
to a safe and easy gait and double harness will not be 
such a dreadful thing to go in. 

Gleason takes a vicious brute, warranted to kick the 
liver pin out of every one who handles him. He slips on 
the persuader and invites him to use his heels. The first 
aggressive movement brings all the straps and pulleys into 
action. Mr. Horse thinks he's scalped ; he knows some 
one has tried to break his jaw, and he looks out for his 
enemy. The instant he understands he's kicking the top 
of his own head off, his kicking days are over. Yes, 
dear girls, adopt the Gleason method of control and your 
comfort is assured, 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 137 

I knew a man not many years ago — balky, bad-tem- 
pered, a chronic kicker. His record was fast, but nothing 
he had ever done justified the opinion he had of his own 
speed. That he was put on earth to show his points and 
paces and never to draw a pound, he firmly believed. 
It fell to one unhappy woman's fate to handle this lad, 
and a lively time she had of it. She never knew where 
she was, nor what was going to happen. He had more 
moods and tenses than a High School grammar. Gen- 
tleness, kindness, persuasion were thrown away, and the 
poor woman was discouraged. But one day she was 
taught a lesson by an old market-woman. It was over in 
New Jersey, and Aunt Hannah had a horse as stubborn 
as a mule. There was no getting that nag to do a 
straightforward thing. It took the old lady three hours 
to go half a mile, owing to an infernal trick the horse had 
of backing. He would leave the stable, setting off as if 
his destination was the object of his life ; but .at the first 
hill he settled back against the dashboard and began the 
return trip with the wagon on his wrong end. 

Hannah worked faithfully with mild " ge-yeps " and 
"hud-ups " and persuasive pulls at the reins. She 
would climb out and lead him a rod. He'd go two 
more on his own account, and then back a quarter of a 
mile. 

One day the old lady saw a neighbor coating the top 
of his fence with strips of tin that bristled with gleam- 
ing rows of tacks. A bright thought struck her. If the 
cats were opposed to a little strip of this invention, what 
couldn't she effect with a square yard of it ! 

That day saw a coat of mail put on the front of the old 
market wagon. Aunt Hannah bought a big piece of cat- 
dissuader and nailed it carefully where it would do the 
most good. Bucephalus was hitched up and went off, as 



138 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

usual, in fair style. At the usual hill the usual business 
occurred. Mr. Nag settled back with a mighty bump. 
He struck the invention and a galvanic shock streaked 
up his spinal column to his ears. Of course, he didn't 
think he did it himself to himself. After a mile or two 
he tried it again, and finally it struck him that backing 
was unpleasant business and he held to his course like a 
lamb. 

Maria saw this operation, and it comforted and sus- 
tained her with new hope. The virtue of tacks and tin 
had never occurred to her before. She went home 
determined on a new line of action. She began a most 
aggressive life. She dealt the kicker a dose of his own 
medicine, and she kept it up for awhile ; but, being of a 
loving nature, enjoying peace, this warfare was unpleas- 
ant. She went over to Jersey to see if tacks and tin were 
permanent reformers, and she met a hearse coming from 
Aunt Hannah's door. The old woman was undergoing 
the process of planting. 

" She died of disappointment," said a neighbor. " You 
heard how she got round that balky horse ? " 

Maria said she had seen the whole thing. 

"Well," continued the historian, "for a month she 
had the upper hand ; but one morning she drove out of 
the barn in a more than usually triumphant manner. 
She reached that hill, and never in her life did she get 
such a setback. It landed her on her beam-end. Down 
went Bucephalus against the dash-board ; what cared he 
for tacks any more ? Aunt Hannah crawled up and 
looked over — the balky brute gave a horse-laugh, flung 
up his tail and showed the astonished old lady a piece of 
sheet-iron neatly riveted on under it. She fell back par- 
alyzed as the sheet-iron and the tacks came together 
like a pair of cymbals. Some said the collision injured 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 139 

her spine ; but I know it was disappointment she died 
of," concluded the neighbor. 

Maria crept back, like a bird with a broken wing, to 
her nest. She took in the tacks. Ichabod should never, 
on her account, shingle himself with sheet-iron. She 
would at least save herself from a death by disappoint- 
ment. There was safety in flight, and when the balky 
one came home to his oats, he found an oat that told 
him to kick to all eternity ; he could never do that one 
lone woman any more harm. 

This little story should not discourage you, girls. Go 
and study Gleason, and see how the thing can be done — 
with a little nerve and a little strap. 



A STUDY OF BALD HEADS. 



I have been making a study of bald heads lately, and a 
very interesting branch of science it is. 

There are the bald heads submissive and the bald heads 
defensive. 

There are the rosy, hearty, jolly fellows, scudding 
along under bare polls, and the indignant, sour old pumps 
who have taken up arms against the fine-tooth comb of 
Time, who clutch at their few remaining hairs and utter 
curses, not loud but deep, at the damnation of their tak- 
ing off. 

These are the men given to devices and self-deceits 
(they never cheat anybody but themselves). They cre- 
ate a parting in that unexpected region close to the rim 
of their ears which should be like Canaan's shore, where 
we part no more. They take the forty-seven hairs thus 
accumulated and make a thin layer, one hair thick, and 
diffuse it with mucilage over the bald skull. Then ensue 
the splits. 

There was dear Tom Stewart, who was once a Senator, 
and afterward lawyer for the Gilsey estate, whose care- 
fully-arranged top-dressing used to crack and exhibit the 
bumps of Deuteronomy to the admiring fellow that sat 
behind him. 

There's an addled ticket-speculator who owns a blue 
coat and brass buttons, a No. 10 pair of dead white kid 
gloves, and the regulation forty-seven top hairs. He 
reserves for himself a seat in the front row for all the 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 141 

Patti nights. He brings in a bouquet in a paper over- 
coat ; he carefully feels of the delusive hirsute veil that 
disguises his veneration, and he waits for the first impor- 
tant aria. Then he rises, fires his floral feelings, waves 
a pocket-handkerchief, cries " Brava " in the key of D 
(Mierzwinzki's top note), sits down and puts his hands on 
the apex of his identity. Ye gods ! his emotion has pro- 
duced a split. His Fowler & Wells is visible, and he 
rushes for the foyer ; and in some secluded place, with a 
pocket-comb, he renovates himself. 

I always feel sorry for the man whose capillary pos- 
sessions go off as our sable muffs do, in spots, when the 
moths get into 'em. Now, when my blessed skye-terrier 
got under the nose of a boiling and overflowing tea-ket- 
tle, and the hot water took off a patch of hair the size of a 
94-cent dollar, I tied a rose-colored ribbon about the root 
of his tail and hid his loss beneath a rosette bow. This 
remedy is denied to man, and I can hardly blame him 
when he glues a little hair pen-wiper upon the spot where 
Nature has unkindly treated him. (This forgiveness does 
not extend to the careless gentleman in row E at the 
theatre the other night, who, in the convulsions of a well- 
executed sneeze, deposited a little mat of hair in my lap 
which left an aperture in his shining locks for all the 
world like a cyclopean eye looking for its lost blinder.) 

Then there's the eccentric bald head, w T here every 
feather falls save on one fruitful bit of soil. This top- 
knot is one of unfailing delight to me — the wee tuft that 
thrives on an oasis in the desert gives such a low-comedy 
cut to the severest class of face. 

I read the other day the affidavits of several well- 
known men in behalf of some hair-compelling remedy, 
and it struck me, in view of Thomas' head, that Profes- 
sor Doremus as a recommender was a very neat and 



142 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

cheerful thing. There's a man to whom every avenue of 
chemistry and medicine is open. If there is a wile by 
which a hair can be lured from its lair, certainly Dr. 
Doremus knows it. Now look at his young son Thomas — 
why, his head and Billy Birch's look in an audience like 
a pair of roc's eggs in the parent nest ! 

Has it ever occurred to you, reflective Mirror, that 
baldness is associated with the name of Joseph ? The 
baldest head that ever surmounted the difficulty we call 
man is that worn by Joseph Polk. The lamented Judge 
Joe Dowling had another. Joe Coburn is running around 
town with a neat hairless disk mapped out on top of him. 
Joseph Proctor has nothing between him and heaven 
when his hat is off. I believe Mrs. Potiphar would never 
have laid hold of the original Joseph by his under-cloth- 
ing if he had had a lock of hair available for detaining 
purposes. And look at Joseph Howard ! The baldness 
and polish of that Shakespearean head are beyond descrip- 
tion. I saw a fly make an appointment with his lady-love 
to meet on Joe Howard's bump of veneration. What 
was the result ? The old girl got there first — she usually 
$oes — slipped up, slid off and broke both her hind legs. 
The hero arrived next, lost his balance, undertook to walk 
off on Joseph's ear instead of his own, broke his back, 
and there was ended one of the sweetest little love epi- 
sodes of the past summer. 

Now all these bald-headed facts are public property. 
I'm going to disclose a discovery I have lately made that 
rendered me sleepless and alarmed my friends, who feared 
it would be temporary. There are as many bald women 
as bald men ! 

One day on Sixth Avenue I wandered into a myste- 
rious bureau for the renovating and general repairing 
of females. I represented that I had a much dilapi- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 143 

dated aunt who needed fixing up, and I found a very 
jolly woman, who presently got to laughing heartily at 
the diagnosis of my relative's case. Then we became 
confidential. She showed me some hair-standing inven- 
tions for the improvement of the human form, and dwelt 
with persuasive eloquence on a new front of her own 
manufacture. One after the other, customers dropped 
in in pursuit of this marvellous front. She had an end 
of the room screened off by several curtains, behind which 
the trying on was done. 

" I'd like to tend shop an hour or so, and get a further 
insight into the front business that's carried on in the 
back," said I. 

Now, Madame was fascinated by my winning ways, and 
replied "that I might if I chose." In tw T o seconds I had 
my hat off, my coat hung up, a large blue apron pinned 
over my dress, and, armed with a comb, I began to stir 
up boxes of scalplocks and switches as if I'd been in the 
hair trade since the war of 1812. 

Two women came in. One of them is conspicuous in 
society for her profuse silver hair. She disappeared 
behind the curtain with Madame. I seized a box of hair- 
pins and dashed fearfully in after them. The customer 
removed a strawberry-colored hat created with particular 
reference to "that lovely silver hair." She unhooked a 
mysterious rubber cord ; she took out a young herd of 
invisible hairpins, while Madame tenderly dandled a 
structure of waved and puffed w T hite hair designed for 
her use. Then I turned to watch the other's operations, 
when — O, transformation scene in a Christmas panto- 
mime ! — there stood the dame, picked as clean as a goose 
on a market stall. A little fuzz stuck up here and there ; 
but from the front clear back to the centre of her head 
she was as bald as any Joseph in the batch ! 



144 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

I fell over on a friendly chair and spilled all the hair- 
pins. Madame said : " Maria, you ain't well. I guess 
the holidays is too much for you." 

So, saying " I think I'll go sit by the stove and get a 
little air," I crept out. 

Then in bounced the wife of a prominent jeweler on 
Broadway — a tall, lean woman with a good deal of black, 
shiny hair inside a fishwife hat. 

" I want to see one of those Langtry fronts," she said. 
A girl stepped forward to wait on her. I picked out a 
lovely snarl of brown curls, and, smiling like a Cheshire 
cat, took this customer in hand myself. 

" That's not a match for my hair," said the customer. 

"No," I blandly responded ; "but it would suit your 
fair complexion so well that it would be worth while mak- 
ing your hair match this front." The lady hesitated. I 
glanced at the name on the wrapper of a bottle behind 
me, and continued : " Two applications of our celebrated 
Drury Lane ["Ameoline," whispered the attendant] 
would bring your head up to the proper shade." 

" I've a good mind to try that front on," said the lady. 

I seized her muff and umbrella and whisked that wo- 
man behind one of the curtains quicker 'n a wink. We 
had that hat off, and then the embankment of black hair 
thrown up in front. Great Scott ! I had unearthed 
another Joseph. Her skull fairly gleamed at me. 

"Your hair is pretty thin on top," said I, desiring to 
flatter her. " Yes," said she, " I wear those false pieces 
to rest my part." 

My head struck the surbase as I shook the house with 
a heavy back fall, carried clean off my feet by this last 
remark. I lay on a sofa in the outside room, while a 
dozen customers came and went, when I was roused to 
immediate action by the well-known voice of a friend who 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 145 

has worn her hair in a bang with a bow on top for a year 
past. 1 climbed up and followed Madame and my inti- 
mate, whom I will call Louise, because that is not her 
name. They disappeared into one cubby-hole, while I 
took the one next door. 

Louise explained that she " wanted something to look 
natural and obviate the necessity of wearing any orna- 
ment to hide the meeting." These were her mysterious 
words. By this time I was on a chair and looking over 
the top of the partition. Louise took off her feather tur- 
ban, unpinned that everlasting ribbon bow she loved so, 
picked up a beautiful fringe of hair that was bandaged 
on by an" invisible net, and, horror on horror's head ! she 
was as bald as a billiard ball ! 

The concussion was heard in the street. They say the 
chair can be mended. I have been put together, and 
bodily may call myself mended. Mentally I am much 
broken, and it's doubtful if I am ever again the same 
Giddy Gusher. 



THE GREEN PAPER BOX. 



There is no place like the express office to study the 
home-made bundle in its native enormity. There are 
bundles and bundles. There's the symmetrical package 
that the deft hands of the tradesman sends home. But 
there's the dear old bundle from home that comes by 
express to you at Christmas. Seven kinds of string 
knotted together hold Aunt Hannah's knit socks and 
mother's mince-pie in sweet communion. It is neither 
square, round, nor octagonal, the home-made bundle, but 
it's a daisy all the same, and represents all the loving 
kindness this earth holds for its poor human creatures. 

There are two things in this world I honestly respect 
— the home-made bundle and the green paper box. I 
believe every woman has a green paper treasure box — an 
insecure receptacle for the collected trophies of the 
changeful years. 

The average human being begins the box business at 
ten. Armless dolls and scraps of broken tea-pots fill it 
up to that age. Most children hold the belief I did, that 
pistols grew to be guns and enjoyed an old age of can- 
nons ; that my father's watch would in middle life be a 
family clock, and later on retire to a church steeple ; 
that my beloved brother's roundabout would put out tails 
as it grew up, and in the form of a surtout or overcoat 
would finish a life of usefulness. 

Believing this, how can children forsake broken toys ? 
So the babies treasure one of this kind till school tickets 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 147 

and rewards of merit and pretty crochet patterns give 
place to pink-tinted notes signed Charlie, and withered 
rose-buds and a cheap little ring with a yellow stone in it. 
Then the green paper box undergoes a house-cleaning, 
and clippings from newspapers of sentimental poetry, 
and pictures of adolescent young men and a love-letter 
or so take possession of the receptacle. 

This class of treasures generally holds the fort till the 
twenty-year-old girl is forty. The inevitable friction 
fluctuates ; now it is side whiskers, and now it is not. 
About the time the woman of the box is forty it begins to 
hold a bang-up pair of eye-glasses, a copy of " Over the 
River/' "Beautiful Snow," and recipes for sugar ginger- 
bread ; then tickets to a fair to which the old lady didn't 
go, and an old silver thimble as full of holes as a sieve. 

And later on come the treasures at which one cannot 
laugh. The old green paper box is broken now, and 
numberless white cotton stitches hold the bottom and 
sides together. The hands that tremblingly untie the 
faded ribbon that binds it are wrinkled and withered ; 
the dim eyes peering fondly within can scarce see for 
blinding tears the treasures lying within. In the yellow 
paper there's a lock of hair of the dear side-whiskered 
Adonis that waltzed into her affections forty years ago ; 
but that's the least valuable of the mementos. Side by 
side with a boy's top lies a tiny creased stocking — the 
swell of the fat leg is in it yet, but the little foot that 
shaped it has wandered far from the quiet paths of home. 
In one corner lies a bunch of withered flowers. Will the 
anguish of the hour in which she first saw them ever fade 
from her suffering heart ? It was a woman's thoughtful- 
ness that took them from the pulseless breast of her dead 
boy in a foreign land and sent them to the bereaved 
mother. 



I48 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

There's a rusty, blackened penny and a school ticket 
in another corner. From the ticket the bad marks have 
long been washed away by tears. These relics were 
found in Johnny's little pants pocket, when Johnny, with- 
out his little trousers, went swimming in Boston Bay 
and never was heard from again — that's twenty years 
ago. I find I've been recounting to you the contents of 
Aunt Sally's box, and I may as well go on and relate the 
sequel. 

One bitter December day, the last of a cheerless year 
for her, Aunt Sally had opened the box, tenderly touched 
all her treasures, sighed over the stocking, and dropped 
a tear on the grave flowers. She picked up the black- 
ened penny, Johnny's one bit of filthy lucre, and rever- 
ently kissed it. Johnny was her youngest, and a merry 
elf ; she could never feel quite sure he was dead, though 
twenty years had elapsed since the accident in Boston 
Harbor. 

Aunt Sally was all alone but for the married daughter 
in Connecticut with whom she lived. The old green box 
was carefully tied, and far into the evening the old 
woman sat and nursed her treasures and memories of 
the past till the necessity of darning stockings for her 
unruly grandchildren brought out her specs and put 
away the box. 

Aunt Sally had a hard time with growing, ill-mannered 
youngsters and a hulking son-in-law, and on this New 
Year's eve her dependent and forlorn condition came 
home to her with such strength that she couldn't see 
through the tear-stained glasses to thread her needle. 

When of a sudden the maid-of-all-work came in to 
announce that a strange gentleman wanted to see her. 

"Wants to see my daughter, you mean," said the old 
lady. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. I49 

" No ; he's none of our town folks. He's come to see 
you — Mrs. Sally Cheney." 

And so Aunt Sally got up and took off her apron and 
laid her specs on the green box, and courtesyed bashfully 
to a tall, strong man who stood in the " best room " wait- 
ing her. 

" Did you want to see me, Mrs. Sally Cheney ? " said 
she. 

"I do," answered the man, 

"What for?" asked Aunt Sally. 

" Because you are Mrs. Sally Cheney. I am your son 
Johnny who was lost in Boston Harbor twenty years 
ago ! " 

And so the little old creature was gathered to his 
breast and heard how the wicked Johnny went sailing off 
in a Chinese junk that lay in the bay these many years 
ago ; and how he had made a fortune out of Ah Sin ; 
and how 7 at last he thought of home and mother, and so 
this New Year guest made of her sad life a joyful one, 
and changed an existence of bitter dependence to a brick 
house in Boston with white window shutters" tied with 
black ribbon. 



ASA FARWELL'S CHERRY. 



There are occasions on which I should like to be 
present, and I am just now hoping fervently I may be 
permitted to witness the meeting between the Lord and 
Mr. E. T. Thompson of Indianapolis. It's not enough 
for me that I read he has been violently thrown to the 
ground by some lawyer out there. I hunger to see him 
handed down on a pitchfork to the quarters to which by 
nature and acquired ability he belongs. 

I can understand how a decent, well-behaved man 
(allowing, for the sake of the argument, there is such 
an article) can be suddenly demoralized by some dread- 
ful discovery of infidelity at home ; but how it lies in 
any man's boots to coolly, calmly work on a wretched 
woman's feelings — beleaguer, deceive, draw on to de- 
struction, an unhappy wife and mother who had erred 
and suffered, acknowledged, confessed, entreated mercy, 
and lay broken at his feet, I can't make out. 

Unfortunate Mrs. Thompson ! She accepted the false 
theory that man's position is on the judgment seat. She 
begged for mercy ; she sued for forgiveness — she got 
treachery, insult and abuse till she went and committed 
suicide, leaving behind her a lot of letters so full of abject, 
pitiful misery that even other men are pointing the finger 
of scorn and turning down the thumb of condemnation at 
the wretch. The papers say he is in the last stages of 
consumption. Take away his cod-liver oil and let him 
spend the last afternoons thinking up the subject. That 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 15 1 

desperately suffering soul confessed over and over her 
one dereliction from the path of virtue. Why didn't 
she brace up and ask E. T. Thompson for a small confes- 
sion of twenty-hornet power ? Why, instead of leaving 
this earth on his account, she would be to-day thanking 
heaven that he wouldn't speak to her. 

I remember that once on a time an old fellow in my 
native town named Farwell invented a sweet, seductive 
fluid that worked on the inner man, or inner woman, with 
such dire effect that straightway he unbuttoned his soul 
and aired that which was worst within him. Asa Farwell's 
Cherry was the name of this cordial, and wild cherries 
and French brandy entered largely into its composition. 

Well, there was a strait-laced, sanctimonious old 
pump, whom we will call Comstock, and he had a pretty, 
frivolous wife, of whose conduct he was ridiculously 
jealous. They got a gallon of Farwell's Cherry into the 
house and sampled it on Sunday night. I was a kid of 
ten years, but I enjoyed the sight of old Pop Comstock 
getting very lush on Farwell's Cherry. 

" Now, acknowledge, Myra," said he, " that you flirted 
last summer with Dr. , and that you were off sleigh- 
ing with him last week when you said you sat up with 
Miss Middleton's little boy with the measles." 

And Myra, with Farwell's confession-fluid on board, 
got up and confessed, and during the confession I filled 
Pop Comstock 's glass twice. My dear friend Myra was 
weeping dismally on the sofa when I dosed Pop for the 
third time. 

" I'm sure I meant no wrong," bleated Myra, " and 
you'll forgive me, won't you, darling ? " 

Pop's features were fixed in a Spartan expression of 
unforgiveness, but of a sudden the last dose of Farwell 
did the business. He broke down into a maudlin state 



152 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

of sloppiness. He confessed hired girls, and across-eyed 
seamstress ; he confessed a whole chapter of New York 
iniquity when he was " down on business ; " he confessed 
Myra's cousin from Vermont and the wife of the last 
minister. Well, it's no use recapitulating what he didn't 
confess — a much easier task than what he did. Myra 
fainted, and I ran home, and when the divorce case that 
she instituted was called I only escaped a witness-box by 
being under age, and unreliable even then. 

It was a lesson for me, and when I see a contrite spirit 
and a female in a Niobic condition I always long for Asa 
Farwell's Cherry and its property of wringing confession 
from the male sect. 



THE INEQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 



"All men are created free and equal." There's no 
living sort of doubt about that — free enough, and equal 
to most anything ; but where's the nice little text about 
the equality of women ? One of those bursted old adages 
used to run : " What's sauce for the goose is sauce for 
the gander." Not in my time, let me tell you, and I've 
had a great time. 

There are two distinct laws on every subject — for man 
and woman. There are two distinct customs on every 
point — for man and woman. The only thing they take 
the same way is a coffin, and there wouldn't be any 
equality about that episode if the man could chip in for 
a* minute after his last check was played. Most men 
entertain the Persian idea of the next world. They don't 
believe there are to be any women in heaven. That they 
will have visiting bands like Rentz's Female Minstrels to 
minstrel to 'em, they think is likely ; but none of the 
ordinary house-keeping, button-sewing, baby-spanking 
kind of women people the average man's paradise. 

There's an awful surprise in store for some of those 
men when they hang round and brace Peter for a pass. 
I don't suppose there are two he-angels to the dozen in 
all the heavenly host. Never mind where I get my theo- 
logical views. They may be drawn from George But- 
ler's Analogy or Charlie Foster's Seances, or I may have 
been under Pa Beecher's teaching. I don't say. But I 
do say to these arrogant and gallivanting men, " Look 



154 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

out for a pullback when you get to heaven. It'll upset 
every theory you have ever had on earth/' If I had no 
better information on the subject than the inequality of 
the sexes here, I should know that in the next world 
woman would have the chance to get even. 

I have had some words with you already about the 
sufferings of us girls ; but the cruellest blow we get 
in life is when we get a husband. It's the dreadfullest 
shock of all. It's quite the belief that none but profes- 
sionals get bad husbands. That's a mistake. Most all 
husbands are bad ; but the doings of public people are 
made public oftener, and that's the way this idea gets 
about. 

And the conceit of these men ! It just drives one wild 
to see 'em. I declare it acts on me like a dose of medi- 
cine to walk through that square and see 'em holding up 
posts and scratching the sidewalk with little canes, and 
twiddling their moustaches, and pulling their side-whis- 
kers, with their poor wives at home washing and darning 
tights, or curling wigs, for making 'em pretty, to " mash " 
country towns next season. 

No difference, indeed ! Why, even in the way people 
think of men and women's personal appearance there's 
an awful difference. Where's the woman who enjoys a 
bald head properly ? I've yet to find her. What a howl 
would go up if Mrs. Le Brun or Emma Skerritt should 
walk into a hotel dining-room without any false hair on ? 
And just look at Jim Collier, Joe Polk and Jack Studley 
—all of 'em balder than so many pats of butter — sunning 
themselves on the square and fanning themselves with 
their straw hats ! W T hy, Studley came on a line of Pope's 
(not W. H. or Charles) one day, and had it framed for 
his own picture : 

"And Beauty draws us with a single hair." 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 155 

[I believe he had just one on top at that time.] 

Look at that duo of dramatists — Daly and Rowe ! They 
haven't got a full set of teeth between 'em, all put together. 
That doesn't prevent their smiling like Cheshire cats on us 
girls, and we don't mind if there is a stage wait between 
their molars and incisors, or twenty years elapse between 
their eye-teeth without an event. 

But we — we girls have got to get in a row of piano 
keys just as soon as the men's awful conduct makes us 
gnash our first teeth to pieces. We have got to take 
to scratches just as soon as grief has snatched us bald- 
headed. Bah ! talk of equality, there's no such thing. 

It's a pretty cool day, and if you stop here in the shade 
of the paper costumes in the Domestic Sewing Machine 
window, I'll show you just a few instances of man's base 
ingratitude. The square is full of them. And oh ! how 
many have folded their tired hands above broken hearts, 
and gone to take the first rest they have had in many 
seasons ! We girls have planted a dozen instances dur- 
ing the last few years. 

There was Eliza — as good and true and sweet a woman 
as ever lived — lumpy and plain in form and features, with 
a big bank account wrested from small towns by years of 
hard work. She had every comfort, and w T hat on earth 
she wanted of a husband no one of us could imagine ; 
but she would marry, and she did. From being sought 
for, and admired for her various virtues, and undoubted 
talent, she subsided into a humdrum wife ; lived in fam- 
ily hotels ; went nowhere ; saw her money invested and 
lost on non-paying but amusing ventures ; had the great 
felicity of hearing occasionally how well Miss Polly This 
or Dolly That looked out driving behind her husband's 
fast horses with her husband as driver. As the gentle- 
man took no meals at the family hotels, save a breakfast 



156 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

in their private parlor, the boarders were not familiar with 
his frontispiece, and it led to dreadful blunders. 

Poor Eliza, sitting one day in the public parlor, was 
saluted by a female patron of the house and the theatres 
in this fashion : " Wouldn't you like to go to a perform- 
ance this afternoon ? I made the acquaintance of Dolly 
Dasher, the juvenile lead at the Lycopodean, when I was 
in the country, and we got to be no end of friends. She 
sent me tickets for to-day. It might cheer you up a bit 
to go. She's such an imp on the stage. I don't think 
she'll be long there, however, as Melchisedec is so fond 
of her." 

Eliza (faintly) — " Melchisedec ? " 

"Yes, the manager. He came down to Greenwich 
every Saturday she was there. I think they are engaged ; 
out every day together, and such presents — just a stream 
of 'em. He's a deal older ; but he's very rich. His first 
wife, I heard Dolly say, was awful rich.' , 

Eliza groaned as she interrupted her tormentor with 
the feeble remark : " Well, she is not so awful rich now ! 
I'm his first wife." 

She felt poor enough, I'll be bound, just at that min- 
ute. 

It wasn't long after that word was passed around 
among us girls that Eliza had closed her earthly engage- 
ment. Melchisedec was a widower for a few months, 
and then married some young snip of a thing, who will 
serve him right before long, or I'm no judge. 

Just as I said— here comes one of the deeply injured. 
She's rather a pretty little woman and she's a nice little 
actress. Looks a bit like Lotta, doesn't she ? Well, she 
hasn't had Lotta's luck. She got married some years ago 
to a common sort of fellow, very common to look at, but 
she loved him dearly. What an affectionate wretch he 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 157 

was, to be sure, during those first years ! Then he went 
abroad and met another actress who had a lot of spare 
change to take him about upon. The story reached the 
wife and she cried and mourned over him, but believed 
in him. Oh, yes, there was no end to her trust in him. 
Finally he came back on a visit, and the little wife and 
he passed a week in a country place where the one-sided 
love was as plain as the handle on a jug. But she clung 
and clasped and blushed and beamed on him. It was a 
sort of little second-hand honeymoon for her. Then the 
time came for him to sail away to his London engage- 
ment, and the sad thing was not allowed to go into town 
to see him depart. But her heart-breaking farewell was 
taken in the early morning. There she stood on the 
stoop, looking through blinding tears at the figure climb- 
ing a little hill — a sort of good-bye hill, where all the 
husbands kissed their hands every morning as they went 
to the city to the girls they left behind them. Did this 
European scarecrow look back ? Not once. He clutched 
his carpet-sack in one claw ; he struck out for " England, 
home and beauty " with an umbrella in the other claw, 
and never turned till he got on board the steamer. 

Oh, well, I wouldn't have given a last year's love-letter 
for the whole outlook ; but poor Sis " laid the flattering 
unction to her soul " that it was all right. Then one day 
she got a letter coolly setting forth an incompatibility of 
something or other — and telling her, in so many words, 
that she might better herself as soon as she could, as he 
should never live with her again. If she had bettered 
herself would you blame her ? There she is, smiling just 
now as she sees us, but wearing out her very soul in tears 
and lamentation for the living and the dead — both equally 
dead to her. 



A RAILWAY ACQUAINTANCE. 



The Gusher is an awful cockney. New York during 
almost any month, and particularly through the heat of 
summer, is good enough for her. She has been beguiled, 
when she was younger and more gullible, into a week at 
Long Branch, where she had to stand on her Saratoga to 
put on her swell harness, the room was so small and the 
trunk so big, where she slapped herself black and blue 
trying to break the backs of Jersey mosquitoes. She has 
put in a season at Saratoga, and poisoned herself drink- 
ing the nasty water, and perished like a frog in the dust 
and din of the place. But now she just enjoys the sum- 
mer in the cool and shady sanctity of her own city home, 
and when the cold weather comes she takes a hack at 
the country, where she has found a truly comfortable 
home. 

Way up among the Berkshires, with rare old woods 
outlying, and a grand prospect stretching out with a 
glimpse of the Catskills cut in blue, beyond the gor- 
geous autumn-dyed hills, there is a country house as is a 
country house — with marble baths and a city range, a 
billiard-room, a library of thousands of n?.re books, a 
gas-house, an ice-house, a grapery under glass, where 
bunches grow that would cost five dollars each in New 
York — with a perfect armory from which to choose, and 
go blazing away at the birds over the wooded hills. 

That's the sort of country place, where one can browse 
about and get a bag of birds and walk in and have a 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 159 

warm bath to take the tire out ; sit down to a capital 
dinner of soup, fish, game, vegetables, and fruit manu- 
factured on the premises ; drink wines that have lain 
fifty years in the cellars of the family, and go off to bed 
in a room furnished by Marcotte, where the carpet cost 
$800. That's the sort of country life the Gusher loves, 
and she's been having a good time leading it for a week. 
Out in these wilds there are some of the most surpris- 
ing entertainments. There I found the posters of a Mr. 
Spaulding Foster's Oliver Twist combination. And on 
a rickety little train branching off from the Harlem line I 
came across the gayest specimen of the profession I ever 
met. She was gotten up in a cheap imitation of some 
of the actresses of old times. I've seen pictures of Men- 
ken and the Western girls, Lucille and Helen, upon 
which she had modelled her exterior. Since Absalom 
got hung by his back hair there hasn't been so much 
o c it in the woods. This girl had a dozen long curls 
depending from an immense waterfall ; she had a braid 
hitched on falling amidst the curls ; she had a hair 
doughnut built up on her brow and plastered down a la 
Menken on her forehead ; she had a couple of regular 
backwood beau-catchers in front of each ear. And, sur- 
mounting all this, she wore a hat such as one sees in the 
first act of " The Hunchback " on the head of the Julia 
of some travelling company — pink silk, wax beads, and 
a sweeping feather and bunch of " artificials,'' all more 
or less broken up by a life led in trunks and cham- 
pagne baskets. With this excited-looking hat she wore 
a number of yards of tartan plaid wrapped round her in 
Helen McGregor fashion, and this wrap was surmounted 
by a lace shawl thrown over one shoulder in the Camtlle 
style. In her hand she bore the unmistakable brown 
paper cover " part," and ever and anon she referred to 



160 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

the inner leaves — then shut her eyes and moved her lips 
as if in prayer. 

The temptation was too much, and down I sat beside 
her. There were the usual remarks about the weather, 
and then I asked if she liked travelling. The flood-gates 
were opened. I just sat still and listened. 

She made answer : " No, I can't say as I do ; but I have 
to be travelling all the time. I belong to the Barrett and 
Booth Mary Anderson combination. We played in Chat- 
ham last night, and to-night we show in Stephentown. I 
'spose I'm foolish to take an engagement for this route, 
as Warde telegraphed me from Chicago last night that if 
I would join him he'd wait for me there till I'd finished 
the week with this troupe. You know who Warde is, I 
suppose ? He plays Virginius beautiful, and he told me 
he never see any Virginia come up to mine. Virginia 
is his daughter, you know, in the play. But Mr. Booth 
won't hear of my going." 

" Indeed. I someway got the idea Mr. Booth was 
playing in New York." 

"Yes. Ned Booth is playing there, most probable. 
This is Mr. Eglington Booth, the famous tragedy actor." 

" Oh, indeed ! I know nothing of theatrical affairs." 

" What a pity ! there's nothing so interesting as play 
acting ! I'm studying my part for the next piece. 
We do the i Two Orphans ' Monday night. This part 
of Louise was written for me. She's a blind girl, and 
gets lost, and has to beg for a dreadful old woman. 
We shan't have the old woman, because our company 
is a little short, and our old woman has to play my 
sister ; but Mr. Booth he doubles the Chevalier Vaudrey 
with Antoine ; and Pierre, that's Mr. Barrett " 

" Lawrence Barrett ? " 

" No, not Larry Barrett ; this is Sam Barrett, the great 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. l6l 

low comedian. He's great in Pierre, sings the ' Cork 
Leg,' and does a lame hornpipe. Oh, he's immense ! 
We shall play it much better than it was done in New 
York. I'm very strong in it. The gentleman who wrote 
it for me, Mr. Boucicault, said nothing was ever seen 
like me in the part. I let down all my hair " 

"All that hair?" 

" Yes." 

" Your hair is very remarkable ; some of it is curly 
and some of it straight." 

" Yes, I've ruined my hair wearing wigs ; it takes the 
curl out frightful ; but I was telling you Mr. Barrett 
plays Pierre and the Prefect of Police and a Sister of 
Charity, and speaks outside when he ain't on for Fro- 
chard — that's the old woman. And when he's on, Mr. 
Booth speaks her lines at the wings — it's just as good." 

" Much more compact ; I should think it would be 
better." 

" It is ; we give a great rendition of it." 

" And what is your name ? " 

" Anderson — Mary Anderson — I see you look — there's 
another Mary Anderson somewhere out West ; she's a 
bread-and-butter school-girl, I have heard ; I haven't 
seen her. She's a cheeky one, too ; has her pictures 
taken as bold as brass, and puts my name on them, and 
she looks no more like me than chalk is like cheese." 

" Is your company a large one ? " 

" Yes, it is, when we all get together ; but we are 
somewhat scattered just at present. There's five of us 
altogether now, but we hire some new actors in every 
place just for the night. We shall have to hire some one 
to play the Doctor in ' The Two Orphans.' " 

" Who plays the part that Robson made so much of in 
the piece, the comic servant ? " 
ii 



162 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" Oh, Mr, Barrett ; he's awful funny." 

11 And who plays the Marquise ? — that's an important 
part." 

" Why, how well you know the piece ! Well, Mrs. 
Stanislaus Rockeby ; she doubles with Louise," 

" How convenient ; I would like to witness this unique 
performance." 

" That's just what the Vineland Farmer calls me — and 
a more ' lucky ' actor you never saw in your life. What's 
your name, by the way ? " 

" Do you ever see the Mirror ? " 

" Oh, to be sure ! Mr. Booth gets all the theatrical 
papers." 

" Well, my name, my dear, is Miss G. Gusher, and 
you'll find it appended to a column in that paper, where 
the interesting editor chooses to style me the Giddy 
Gusher." 



BLESSED ARE THE HARD OF HEART. 



There was a season of scholastic repose in my youth, 
when our young ladies' academy was kept by Eunice 
Billings, and Eunice was courted by a young shoemaker 
in Natick, Mass. 

The postman was the postmaster's daughter, who 
brought Eunice her daily letter ; and according to the 
length of that letter our studies were regulated. The 
Natick man was jealous, and wrote one day that his mind 
was full of "strange and dark imaginations." Eunice 
went into the class-room weeping, and we played all day. 

It was the custom of this love-lorn maiden to make us 
each commit a verse in Holy Writ to memory. We did 
not all recite our verse, but she snapped us up one by 
one about the school, and woe betide the girl who 
couldn't jump on her hind legs and strike out plump from 
the shoulder with chapter and verse ! 

Eunice had several big girls she cottoned to who did 
most of the Bible verses, and little Giddy just got used 
to it, and never studied a verse. But one day, when a 
niece of Henry Wore Breeches delivered herself of a jaw- 
breaking chunk out of Deuteronomy, down the hall rang 
the fatal call, " Miss Gusher next ! " 

Now, even my enemies admit that I'm not backward 
in coming forward. I sprang to my feet without an 
instant's delay. Not a verse could I bring to mind, if I 
ever knew any ; but that was no reason why I should not 
speak one, so I bravely sang out : 



164 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" Blessed are the hard of heart, for they shall inherit 
the salt of the earth. — Malachite v. x." 

Eunice Billings was the own child of a minister and 
had been brought up on Bible. She never winked. A 
dozen of the big girls were regular Bible sharps. Not 
one fell over that verse. I had a dim sort of idea that a 
lot of little reports of Biblical affairs tacked on to the Old 
Testament bore the names of Esau, Gideon, Malachite, 
and with persuasive confidence I put forth my authority 
as Malachite. 

That was, like dear little Buttercup's confession, " Many 
years ago "; but I look on that verse in a new light. That 
was not a composition of my own. The fact that I can't 
find it between the covers only convinces me that it has 
been left out. It's the essence of prophecy ; it's the 
quintessence of truth : " Blessed are the hard of heart, 
for they shall inherit the salt of the earth." 

The other night at the theatre, the Gusher from her 
perch above surveyed the crowd beneath, and a crowd 
of notabilities they were. 

There sat under that far-away dome three bravely 
attired dames, whose ossification of heart began early. 
One of them belonged to Eunice's school, and as a girl, 
betrayed such a refrigerated condition of the right and 
left ventricle that Nellie Marcy prayed for its softening. 
Nellie was a gentle creature, who prayed for everything 
and everybody. She took me into her confidence one 
day, and told me that she was praying for her husband ; 
" because, dear Giddy," said she, "if I am ever to marry, 
somewhere on this earth my dear husband is now living. 
So I pray for his proper guidance." 

God bless the girl ! She prayed to some purpose ; for 
to-day she is Mrs. George B. McClellan. 

Well, this stony young woman who displayed, so early 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 165 

enough cruelty to entitle her to our small prayers, flour- 
ished like a green bay tree, and is one of the richest 
women in the State. Her father, in the days of Eunice 
Billings' educational academy, was a hard-working cabi- 
net-maker, and on cold days was not above pulling 
Icyanne (as we'll call her) to school. She told us he was 
"the hired man," the young upstart! The poor, kind 
soul was a widower, and Icy was his only child. He 
slaved in his factory year in and year out, and in some 
lucky moment hit upon some invention of window shades 
that made his fortune. Icy married a pushing young 
man — pa furnished capital, and the money came tum- 
bling in. 

The old father in time broke up, as old fathers will. 
Madame Icyanne is in possession of all the property ; she 
boards the old man in a rough farmer's family. Monday 
afternoon a seamstress, who is fixing over my plum-col- 
ored silk, showed me a bundle of clothes — half a dozen 
hickory shirts (if you know that cheap and awful gar- 
ment), shirts of a small make, "let out " and patched to 
fit a big one ; this was Madame's spring outfit — designed 
for that dear old man who pulled her to school on her 
sled, and went without an overcoat one winter to pay for 
a plain silk dress Icy insisted on having. 

Oh ! I know the whole interior of that adamantine 
career. You can always find good skating in Madame's 
vicinity ; and sitting in the balcony, looking down on 
her crimson plush fox-fur-trimmed dolman, watching the 
twinkle of the immense solitaires in her ears — it's a won- 
der they didn't burn — I prayed, as Nellie Marcy did, for 
the cruel old thing ; and then for the hundredth time I 
said to myself, as I felt a saline atmosphere exude from 
her person, " Blessed are the hard of heart, for they shall 
inherit the salt of the earth." 



THE BABY. 



At just the hour last Thursday that the Mirror 
reached the news-stands a bleak November blast was 
sweeping down the hillsides, a dark, forbidding sky hung 
overhead that leaked dismally all the morning and 
announced the storm that finished the day. 

The houses are occasional along a patch of road lead- 
ing off beyond McComb's Dam bridge, and for two hours, 
between eleven and one, no person traversed it but a man 
and woman and a helpless baby. - 

I can understand how a baby can be left on a rich 
man's doorstep. I can understand how a baby can be 
deserted in a railway station, left in a carriage, forsaken 
anywhere in haunts frequented by human beings. But 
how the heart of man, much less of woman, could take 
a mite of a weakling, who had been just eleven days in 
this cold world, and leave it on the sodden ground, with 
a heavy storm already begun, where its feeble wail could 
not reach the ears of any one fifty feet away, and where, 
in all possibility, no foot would pass in days, is beyond 
me to conceive. 

But that man and woman left the road, and in a patch 
of bushes laid the forlorn thing down to die. A misera- 
ble rag of dress, a bit of coarse red flannel and a skirt 
formed his wardrobe, and every article was soaked through 
and through. 

The gods lent him breath for one despairing yell just 
as the tramp of a mounted policeman broke the monotony 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 167 

of the scene. Roundsman Wilkins says his horse scented 
the find and pricked his ears and halted. Again the per- 
ishing infant wailed, and in another minute the bundle 
of red flannel was on horseback pounding away for the 
station-house. 

The bundle disclosed a dear little man child, eleven 
days old, perfect in form and intelligent in face ; but so 
near the kingdom of heaven that had not help reached it 
when it did, Mr. Baby would have needed nothing but the 
cruel ground on which it nearly perished. 

I worked over that atom till the blue arms and legs 
got limber enough to use. Then the law laid its strong 
grasp on the baby. It was raining cats and dogs, but 
down to the Central Office the baby had to go. By this 
time every heart in the hotel ached for the wretched little 
guest, so it was decided Mr. Baby should be entered on 
the register, assigned rooms, and remain. These hospita- 
ble intentions could not be carried out ; to the Central 
Office went the baby, followed by the landlord, whose 
bachelor heart had been touched. 

At headquarters he found the Charity Commissioners 
could alone relinquish the child ; and then again a lot of 
rules and regulations provided Randall's Island for a 
certain time, and off next day, with the worst rain of all 
falling, went the miserable traveller. 

On its track was the rescuing party, however ; and in 
all the awful storm of Friday, in an open row boat from 
Randall's Island to New York, and from thence by train 
to High Bridge, went the young and travelled gentleman; 
and I've got him. 

He has readily adapted himself to the new conditions. 
He takes to his bottle like a real man and he gives no 
trouble. His sad little story got into the papers and 
raised up powerful friends. Dr. Phelps, the Mellin's Food 



l68 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

man, sent a box of that wonderful stuff, with a poetical 
letter, in which he hopes li He may always remember that 
day in November when he was saved from a croup and a 
swim in the soup.'* 

He will certainly remember and revere the name of 
Mellin and the thoughtf ulness and kindness of Dr. Phelps. 
The Gusher had a wild idea of feeding it on milk punch 
and oyster soup. 

At all events here he is, with the dogs sniffing curiously 
about him, the birds singing as if they liked him, and 
Chicot, the blessed monkey, as friendly as possible, shar- 
ing the tending, dividing the care, and doubling up at 
night. Baby on one arm, Chicot on the other, I in the 
middle — all three happy. 



ABOUT INFANTS' NURSES. 



When a woman is weakened in mind by old age, and 
when she is young and silly and has had no experience 
and is unfit for any other work, she advertises as an 
infant's nurse. 

After parading the house like a torchlight procession 
for four nights ; after firing up patent nursery-lamps and 
heating food ; after singing until I was hoarse as a crow 
and walking until my feet ached, it occurred to me a 
nurse wouldn't be a bad investment, and I proceeded to 
answer advertisements. 

The mite of a baby I have taken in is twenty-two days 
old and weighs five pounds. A mother will tell you that 
this age and this weight does not describe a rugged and 
robust citizen. Any one's finger is bigger than poor 
baby's legs. His little powder-box would cover his wee 
head to the shoulders, and altogether the Gusher's waif 
is a wafer — so frail and delicate that the tenderest care, 
the softest touch, and the closest attention are necessary 
to make a voter of him. 

The remembrance of his awful bed in the bushes clings 
to his baby memory. The big blue eyes fill with tears, 
the little lip quivers, and he clutches at warm surround- 
ing flannels to reassure himself that he is only dream- 
ing, and that the hard, cold hillside is not his fate after 
all. 

Therefore, as a nurse I wanted a motherly person with 
a wide, warm lap and caressing touch ; with deft fingers, 



170 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

and above all a loving interest in the weak creature 
against whose life miserable wretches had conspired thus 
early. 

The applicants began to arrive. They helped one old 
woman up-stairs whose breath made a ginny fog in the 
room. If ever she had tried to blow out the nursery 
lamp she'd have taken fire and had spontaneous com- 
bustion. 

They brought up a hard, sinewy piece of crackled ware, 
whose bony fingers suggested the " laying out " business 
of the undertaker's assistant. She was the most mor- 
tuary bit of property I ever met. She was in a state of 
rigor mortis. Her teeth looked like babies' foot-stones in 
a family lot. 

I was at a loss how to address her, but the words came 
instinctively. 

" In the midst of life we are in death," began I cheer- 
fully. 

" I have had great experience with infants," said she. 

I sighed as I thought how great the mortality is 
among those of tender years, but feeling called on to 
reply I remarked : 

" Man is of few days and full " 

" I am a great disciplinarian," continued she, " and 
believe in system." 

I looked at the bundle in my arms and felt that the 
enclosure would stand little discipline at the present 
time, and the human system was the only one for him 
for quite a while. 

There's a man at the Institute Fair peddling zinc 
tombstones, and I recommended her to get a situation 
under him to exhibit and promote his sales. 

Five more old women in various stages of decay and a 
pretty German girl named Gretchen turned up. I was 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 171 

that glad to see something that looked alive that I 
engaged her on the spot. 

She was very nice and neat, but she knew as much of 
a baby as. I do of a steam engine. 

She was utterly incapable and I told her so, and the 
following day found me sitting up with the little man 
inspecting new applicants. 

I had answered an advertisement in Seventy-first Street 
of a Scotch woman of great experience and ability. She 
arrived — a regular Mrs. Gamp— and though I didn't 
like the old party's looks, the case was becoming 
desperate. 

u You have brought up children ? " I asked. 

M I have five daughters of my own." 

" I mean, have you brought up babies on the bottle ?" 

The old thing looked me over. 

" Why don't you nurse the child yourself ? " she ques- 
tioned. 

" Because the child is not mine — it is an adopted child," 
said I. 

" Oh ! " said she. 

Then, knowing if she stayed she must hear all about 
it, I said : 

" You have heard of the baby left to die in the woods 
at High Bridge ? " 

" I have " (with much asperity). 

"This is the baby." 

" And what are you doing with it ? " 

" Trying to get the life living in its puny, abused body 
at present," answered I. 

" It's a child of sin more than likely," sniffed she. 

"An undeniable fact," snorted I. 

" And you expect a respectable person to take care of 
it ? " said she. 



172 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" I do," said I. " No such old, disreputable party as 
you are will do to nurse this child." 

" I'm a God-fearing woman," wailed the Scotch Pres- 
byterian. 

I won't quote profanity, so I can't tell you the next 
shot fired into the Scotch locker. 

" You'd have taken a place with a drunken old father 
and a wanton mother if such a married couple had 
wanted a nurse ? " 

u If the child was born in wedlock, I could mind it — 
not otherwise," said she. 

" Well, confound you ! you canting heathen, you want 
to get to New York as soon as possible ! I'll land you 
in the station-house as a burglar and a thief." 

Now I was mad. 

" You flatter yourself God made you, do you ? Who 
do you suppose created this innocent creature ? Have 
you got a manufacturing company in your creed ? You 
pitiless, flinty-souled old hypocrite — you evil-smelling, 
unpleasant-looking old woman— I wouldn't let this sweet, 
weak baby into your arms any sooner than I'd trust it 
with a lunatic ! The ground from which I took it is no 
colder than your nature — the sky that dripped above it 
no crueler, and the November wind that swept the wet, 
rotting leaves about it no worse a nurse than you would 
prove." 

I was on my hind legs, madder than a hornet. Whether 
I was going to throw the baby at her, or the coal-scuttle, 
was only a matter of choice in her belief. She gathered 
her skirts and pelted off down the stairs and out through 
the bar like a black bombazine cyclone or a rusty crape 
blizzard. 

Then I got desperate. A multitude of friends had 
called, and I was confused by their directions. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 173 

" The only thing to raise that baby on is Cuddles' 
Food." 

44 The only chance that child has is in the Monarch 
Substitute." 

14 The baby may pull through if you go right to work 
and feed it on the Lacteal Champion." 

44 That baby must have the great new food called 
Breast Milk Eclipsed, or Mother Wiped Out." 

44 Condensed milk is the best — Spread Eagle brand. " 

44 Condensed milk makes fine-looking children, but they 
die the minute they get a little sick. Put lime water in 
the milk. Don't put any lime water in the milk. Pour 
boiling hot water over a soda cracker, add teaspoonful 
of sugar and tablespoonful of cream, you'll save that 
baby." 

44 Barley water is the only thing — one cow's milk may do 
the business for you — but he'll die if you don't try that. " 

I began to cry, and tw T o persons speaking at once said : 
"Get a wet nurse." 

I advertised. I believe every mother deserted her 
own child and came up here. 

44 You'll kill that child if the wet nurse's milk is too 
old," said one. 

44 If that woman's milk is too young there won't be 
any nourishment in it, and your baby will fail," said 
another. 

44 How can I tell ? " I moaned. 

44 Get a doctor to get the nurse." 

I went and enlisted the services of a Human Lactome- 
ter, and the good work went on. 

The doctor visited an intelligence office for wet nurses, 
and related his experience. He questioned and examined 
several applicants, and finally came to a pretty German 
sitting quietly by. 



174 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

" How old is your milk ? " asked he. 

" I haven't got any/' said the girl. 

li How old is your baby ? " returned the doctor, think- 
ing the German girl didn't understand. 

" I haven't got any baby," she replied. 

" Good Lord ! what are you here for ? " cried the doc- 
tor. " If you haven't had a baby, or got any milk, what 
are you doing here among the wet nurses ? " 

"I thought I might learn," said she meekly. 

It was Gretchen, and I believe she was encouraged by 
something one of 'em told her, and she was gone away 
to " learn. " 

The doctor made a selection and a portly female came 
up that afternoon. She is to have a young girl to wait 
on her, she must have a milk punch every half-hour, six 
quarts of cocoa made at nine every evening to drink dur- 
ing the night. She must have a broiled chicken for 
breakfast, milk toast, baked potatoes, boiled rice and a 
quart panada. She' must have a porterhouse steak and 
baked sweet potatoes and a bottle of porter and a quart 
custard for lunch. She must have a pair of partridges, 
chicken soup, more baked potatoes, a nice bit of boiled 
fish, and farina or tapioca pudding, a mould of blanc- 
mange, a quart of calves'-foot jelly for dinner, and a few- 
things for supper I have forgotten to put down. 

She can't wash anything ; for putting her hands in 
water might give her a cold. She can't dress the baby 
for the same reason. She can't sleep with the baby, as 
being broken of her rest would occasion weariness and 
anxiety that would impair the nourishment. 

So the Gusher begins to think she has opened a 
restaurant that will not relieve her condition in any one 
way. I presume you'll hear shortly that I've gone back 
to the bottle. 



DREAMS. 



It's a* great pity some contrivance can't be built that, 
being applied to me at night, will catch and retain the 
visions that visit me during sleep. I believe I am the 
boss dreamer of the world. In less time I can dream 
more wonderful dreams than I ever heard spoken of, and, 
like those of Joseph, they are no unmeaning chumps of 
dreams. 

I dreamed the night my folks moved into a new home 
that of a sudden, with terrible noises and full bands of 
brass instruments, the heavens rolled up like a patent 
window-shade, and I beheld tier upon tier of old gentle- 
men that resembled Peter Cooper and Horace Greeley. 
They were all in their shirt sleeves, and between the 
layers of old men there floated streaks of steam, through 
which their faces shone like benignant old washer- women. 
On a raised seat, similar to a leader of an orchestra, 
was a particularly noticeable party, whom I instantly 
recognized from the pictures to be Gabriel, even before 
I noticed the horn under his left arm. An enlarged kind 
of hotel register was opened before an angel of stentorian 
lungs, and the roll-call commenced. There was a wide, 
shining roadway opened at the right of this patriot, and 
a gloomy, cavernous descent led off at the left. As 
each name w r as called I saw my friends take them off by 
one road or the other. Most of 'em took the other. 

I don't think there was a soul I ever knew but his or 
her name was called by the chairman, and amid much 



176 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

clashing of cymbals and despairing howls they left the 
scene of their earthly troubles. This dream had begun 
by my looking at the skies rolling away through a win- 
dow ; but, by one of those inexplicable irregularities, I 
was directly after out upon a vast plain with the multi- 
tude whose names were being called, and, forgetting in 
the excitement of the minute how good I had been, I con- 
cluded a shade tree would be about the thing I wanted. 
The nearest approach to such a thing seemed to be a 
chunky huckleberry bush, and into that I crept with less 
grace than celerity. 

Through page after page went the loud-lunged angel. 
He got through the G's without ever breathing the name 
of Gusher. Once he began " Gid — " and I felt ill ; but 
he finished " Gideon Welles," and I felt relieved. At 
last the end of the book was reached. I was pleased to 
pieces. A huckleberry bush was good enough for me, 
after seeing my friends take on so about going. The 
bands tooted ; the angel shut the book with a rever- 
berating bang. All the old men sitting on steam stood 
up, and the whole affair started off very much like a 
transformation scene. 

" This lets me out," I said softly to myself ; but just 
then I began to wonder what was going to become of 
New York after its depopulation; and being a gregarious 
animal, hankering after the society of my kind, I felt 
indisposed to be left, so I coughed feebly — " Ahem ! 
ahem ! " 

" Who's that ? " asked the County Clerk. 

" It's me," responded I, timidly and ungrammatically. 

" Who's me?" 

" The Gusher of The Mirror: 1 

" Indeed, indeed ; let me see." Evidently The Mirror 
has circulated among the higher circles, for the selectman 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 177 

began to go over the list ; page after page he turned, 
after I crept out of the bush, but nowhere did the name 
of the Gusher appear. 

"You have been very bad," began the bookkeeper, 
" but then you have been very good, and the good has 
so evened up the account that I can't say whether you 
should go up or down ; your record is so middling and 
strikes such an average that nothing remains but to 
assign you a place betwixt and between." 

With that Peter Cooper and Horace Greeley came 
forward. William Cullen Bryant opened a little door 
into a narrow place like an old-fashioned brick oven. 
When the first couple undertook to run me inside this 
thing head first, naturally my first act was to kick. No 
solitary confinement for me. The kicking waked me. 
Behold, there was I, face down on the floor, sand-papering 
my nose on the carpet, and scraping the skin off my 
back trying to slide under the low side of a French bed- 
stead. 

Now, the other day I had a pretty dream. I have 
never stood before a bit of handsome old furniture that 
I did not wish that trees had tongues — so that the expe- 
rience of a bit of mahogany might delight my ears. 

One of my best friends and one of the best fellows in 
the world is Perkins, of Boston. He has lately fitted up 
a road-house just out of the city. The night he threw his 
doors open some of his many friends made a presentation 
of an old-fashioned clock that had a record for going 
as good as any that Golden could show out at Mystic 
Park. 

A thousand dollars had been contributed in as many 

minutes to get up something handsome for " Perk." As 

much of it as could be used in a clock w^s expended ; 

and brass-bound, heavily decorated, fitted with a face 

12 



178 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

that beamed with intelligence, and a pair of hands always 
ready to put up for a friend and for the right ; with a 
voice as deep and musical as Boyle O'Reilly's— there was 
Perkins's clock. And Perkins is as proud of it as a boy 
is of his first trousers (providing they are not of the side- 
door cut). 

Now, on a warm spring afternoon, sitting near that 
clock, above the hum of voices round me I began to 
hear a pleasant little treble singing, and paying attention 
I disentangled the words with very little trouble, and 
here is 

THE SONG OF THE CLOCK. 

I am thinking now of a far-away time, 

Back through many a score of years ; 
I was newly finished, and in my prime, 

When the sound of a bargain reached my ears. 
I was being sold to a noble old man 

As a wedding gift to his favorite boy, 
And I laughed as only a young clock can, 

And struck my hands together for joy. 
I was carted away to a splendid place, 

And received with delight by a lovely wife, 
And I thought, as I looked on her girlish face, 

'Twould be purely pleasure to time her life. 
They stood me up in a corner tall, 

Next a big bay-window, through which I could look ; 
And very little in park or hall 

Escaped Miss Clock in her cosey nook. 
Then an heir was born to my master dear ; 

And I struck all day to denote my joy, 
And to let the very remotest hear 

Of our proud possession — a baby boy. 
But at last the home life of hall and park 

Was broken by crowds of city folk. 
Among them was one I couldn't but mark, 

Whose lips breathed music whenever he spoke. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 179 

Proud lipped and haughty when others were by, 

For my mistress he'd ever an altered tone ; 
Another expression came into his eye 

When by chance they were left in the room alone. 
She saw not the shadow beneath the smile, 

She drank her life's poison from out that look, 
Forgetting my noble master the while. 

They sat near the clock in the ingle nook 
One stormy night — shall I ever forget ? 

The wind had been muttering sullen and low ; 
They came to my side. I can see them there yet, 

With their arms intertwined, walking silent and slow. 
When she glanced at my face, by a dim light's gleam, 

I could see her turn pale, and knew by her look 
She wished in her heart she had not been seen 

With him — by the faichful old clock in her nook. 
I trembled with fear when, at early dawn, 

Careworn and pale my master stood 
Uttering words of hate and scorn, 

And watching the path that led from the wood ; 
And when hurrying steps came flying past, 

And they questioned which road of the two he took, 
I felt that some trouble had come at last 

To the heart of the clock in the ingle nook. 
Another day and another went ; 

I heard no sound ; it was still in the Hall, 
Till, just as the week was nearly spent, 

My master came to me — but under a pall. 
The story was old : she was false to her vow, 

And the bride that with pride to his bosom he took 
Had fled with that man and had broken his heart. 

Why, it nearly broke mine in the ingle nook. 
From that day on I have suffered more pain 
Than I hope I shall ever know again. 
Wet, tearful faces have watched the dead 
And gazed into mine as the sad hours fled ; 
Dim-eyed, faded, deserted wives, 
Leading the saddest of human lives, 
Have come to me, and I had to show 
The cause they had for grief and woe. 



l8o THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Ah, well, that's passed, and a happier fate 

Has reached me, though it cometh late. 

Henceforth only in scenes of joy 

My scoring faculties I employ ; 

I mark the flight of pleasant hours, 

I look through windows on beds of flowers ; 

The loveliest home on earth I've found 

At Perkins's place, on the "One Mile Ground." 

" I honestly believe you have been asleep," says Perk, 
as he sends a Pommery cork against the ceiling, " perhaps 
dreaming ; for while Conant has been telling that dismal 
India-rubber story you have been smiling like a cherub, 
and just now you cried out as if something amused 
you." 

"It did," I replied ; "I've been listening to your clock 
relating something of its past life." 

" You have been dreaming, I tell you ; that's a noble 
clock. I will believe 'most anything of it but that it tells 
stories." That's what Perk said. 

But the clock really did ring that doggerel in a dream 
to the champion dreamer. 



DECORATIVE ART. 



I remember feeling ill myself after a prolonged inter- 
view with some of the works of art hung in the Capitol. 
One particularly aggravating picture, representing the 
battle of something or other — a sort of military erysip- 
elas — gave me the painters' colic. And I came near 
having total collapse when I struck Powell's boat-load 
of terrors. Here, now, Louis Tiffany decorates that 
unfortunate mausoleum of the beautiful, and straightway 
poor old gentlemen of unimpaired eyesight lie down and 
die. Throughout the length and breadth of the land 
female America is at it. Art shops are springing up on 
every street and avenue, where pigments and plaques, 
and turpentine and tambourines, and palettes and plaster- 
of-paris can be bought by the idle and idiotic. 

To stand at a counter in one of these places and hear 
the adolescent artist prate of underglaze and firing, is 
to form some idea of the extent to which this disease 
has spread ; and to visit the homes of about fourteen 
girls out of twelve, is to realize the extent of female 
malignity and male endurance. 

Maria Gushington (a second cousin of the Gusher) 
has been decorating her father's chamber ; the old man 
has been confined to his bed ever since the work was 
completed. She has hung two-ribbon-bowed tambou- 
rines on each side of his bed. On their sheepskin heads 
she has painted apoplectic roses and consumptive calla 
lilies. You know the lilies from the roses by their 



182 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

complexions. On a satin screen a tableau, taken from 
" Mary had a Little Lamb/' is beautifully daubed. You 
have no hesitation in selecting Mary from the lamb, 
because Mary has fewer legs than the lamb and is not 
so woolly. 

But then Maria soared to higher flights. Above the 
mantel is an ambitious representation of Tannhauser and 
Venus, and she can give you twenty-seven guesses and 
you wouldn't come within three blocks of the subject. 
I firmly believed it to be the Annunciation, for some 
time, till, discovering the leg of a bed, I concluded it 
was the Raising of the Widow's Son (for in some way 
I understood it to be a Scriptural subject). Finding I 
was mistaken, it was to me, until yesterday, an interest- 
ing reproduction of that exciting episode, " The Charge 
of the Light Brigade." But Maria alluded to it then as 
her great picture of Tannhauser and Venus. I feel 
much upset in consequence : a ruthless change of 
opinion taking place suddenly inside me is as bad as 
an entire change of diet. No wonder the old man's 
sick ! He has slept amid these pictorial puzzles for over 
a week, and he's all broken up. 

History repeats itself. It's the old story of theorem 
painting and sampler working over again. My grand- 
mother, of blessed memory, prosecuted to her latest days 
an art taught in ladies' academies during the administra- 
tion of George Washington and his immediate successors. 
She possessed a multitude of little cards in which holes 
were cut the shape of fruit and flowers. She laid her 
card-board pattern on the article to be decorated, and 
passed a sponge wet with paint over the holes. This 
was simple, and the effect was as ample as that of the 
average painted tambourine. 

However, if theorem painting was easy, the sampler 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 183 

was a struggle. When the Lord's Prayer, the girl's age, 
two willow trees, and a selection of strawberries had been 
delineated on a piece of linen with laborious stitching, 
woman found that life was not a thornless bed of roses ; 
and when it was hung up in the best room, over a horse- 
hair sofa, it w r as no unusual thing to have a hearse 
backed up to the front door as often as once a month, 
while the weak-kneed succumbed and only the fittest 
survived. 

In view of the great increase of mortality and decora- 
tive art, would it not be w r ell to take legislative means to 
restrain the young women ? Let the unfortunate girl 
who doesn't know one tune from another, and has not 
a note in her voice, be prevented by law from under- 
taking the study of music. Let the artist who paints a 
rose so much like a bunion that a chiropodist would hang 
it out for a sign, be forcibly detained from disfiguring 
our homes. 



THE SERGEANT'S STORY. 



I have a little story to tell you — that is, it's Brophy's 
story, and it's too pretty to keep to myself. 

Sergeant Brophy was sent up here to this precinct from 
down-town about half a year ago. The Police Commis- 
sioners have an idea that any little indiscretion on the 
part of an officer, or any little spite of their own, is 
properly balanced by sending 'em to my precinct. They 
don't know how pleasant I make it for 'em. 

During the six months or more that the Sergeant has 
looked after our personal safety, we have been fast 
friends. He is an observant, kindly, clever man, and 
tells me many interesting things. Last week he had a 
letter from a lady at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, recalling 
an incident that happened five years ago, and asking him 
to call on her immediately. 

Down went the handsome Sergeant, with his sweetest 
smile. He met a very lovely girl of seventeen, who 
cried out when she saw him : 

" You have changed somewhat, Mr. Brophy, but you 
are the man ! I have never forgotten your face." 

" But you are so changed I should never suspect you 
were the little girl on Fourteenth Street that I recollect 
so well," returned Mr. Brophy. 

And this was the incident she had mentioned in her 
note : 

Five years before there was a middle-aged German 
and his wife, and daughter of twelve years, who resided 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 185 

on Fourteenth Street, near Third Avenue. The man was 
a cabinet-maker, who had for a wife a delicate, cultured 
woman, evidently bred in a different circle from that in 
which she moved. The pair were both discouraged by 
their fate in this country. He took to drink and she 
broke down in health. The slender, pale little girl went 
back and forth to the shops, and on the streets she met 
and was noticed by Mr. Brophy. Many times he had 
seen her late at night searching the saloons for her 
father. Many times he had helped her pilot his unsteady 
steps home. Finally the mother died, and the girl and 
her father lived on together, getting poorer and more 
wretched every week, One night one of their neighbors 
came in search of the officer, as a row was occurring in 
the Uhlinger rooms. Mr. Brophy found the father more 
than usually intoxicated, the little girl almost wild 
with grief, and a fine-looking, well-dressed woman in a 
great state of excitement. 

He learned that the lady was a sister of the little girl's 
dead mother ; that she was a wealthy woman from Ger- 
many ; that she had come from over the Rhine in search 
of her little niece ; that the father had executed papers 
giving her a legal title to the child. But now that the 
hour of parting was come he clung to the girl, and in a 
drunken frenzy repulsed the aunt, who proposed taking 
the little one on board a steamer that night that would 
sail early next morning. 

The officer's familiar features calmed the child. She 
begged and prayed not to be taken from her father. 
The aunt was stern ; she knew her rights. There was 
no pity in her heart for the man who had taken her 
sister from comfort to die in poverty in a strange land. 

Brophy felt sorry for them all, but he recognized that 
the girl's salvation hung on the decision of the night ; 



1 86 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

for the daughters love for the wretched father was fast 
weakening the aunt's interest in her niece. So he took 
the little one into a neighbor's room and explained that 
nothing but the workhouse lay in waiting for them both ; 
that if she went with her aunt she could become an edu- 
cated woman and able to help her father ; that her father, 
no longer having two to provide for, would find work 
and get along much better than he could with her. And 
finally he induced her to carry out the original pro- 
gramme and start that night for a brighter home in Ger- 
many. But the girl made him promise, as her only 
friend, to look out for the old man. The officer accepted 
the trust. The aunt took the girl away, and Brophy 
went 'round to the station-house to go on duty, with the 
Dutchman on his mind. 

He made Tony Pastor joint executor of his legacy 
next day, and Tony took the old German into his thea- 
tre as a sort of upholstering scene-shifter. He pulled 
himself together and turned out very well on the helpful 
hands of Pastor and Brophy. 

When George Knight wanted a useful man to manage 
his scenery on the road, Tony recommended Uhlinger. 
By this time he was as steady as Old Time's rocks. Over 
half the United States he travelled with the popular 
stars, Sophie and George Knight. 

Time flies almost unnoticed ; though Sergeant Brophy, 
when he stopped to think of it, remembered that he first 
adopted old Uhlinger in 1880. He couldn't quite realize 
that the weeping, miserable little girl of Fourteenth 
Street had blossomed into the lovely woman who wel- 
comed him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But it was Miss. 
Uhlinger, well grown, well educated, in search of her 
father, after all. 

The years of separation and the well-meant efforts of 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 187 

the aunt to alienate the daughter's heart from the 
father's fate had been ineffectual. 

Only a few months before the aunt had died, leaving 
all she had to her adopted child, and the girl's first 
thought was of America and the poor old loving man, 
who had had his failings, to be sure, but who had always 
loved her. 

I don't suppose there was a better pleased man in New 
York than Sergeant Brophy. He knew just where to lay 
hands on his legacy — for the Knights were playing in 
Harlem, and old Uhlinger, his ward, was at his post. He 
had nothing to tell the daughter of her father but good. 
The man was sober, steady, contented, and happy. He 
had talked but lately with him of his daughter, and the 
father had said sadly : 

" I know nothing of her ; her aunt would prevent her 
communicating with me. But if she is alive, she is a 
lady, and in that I rejoice. I feel that some day the 
thought of her father will come over her and she will 
write. My girl will never forget her poor old father." 

And as Mr. Brophy repeated the conversation, the 
tears fell thick and fast from the girl's bright eyes. 

It was 7.30 when the coupe rattled up to the One 
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street Theatre, and the Ser- 
geant sought George Knight in his dressing-room. In a 
few words the actor was told the officer's mission. 

"Why, it's delightful ! " said Knight. " Do you know, 
I'm as excited as a boy about it. I must see that meet- 
ing. I'm so glad for Uhlinger, poor old chap ! " 

And then Mr. Knight proposed that the girl should 
see the performance, and father and daughter be brought 
together afterwards. 

" You know the sudden joy may be more than an old 
man can bear," said Sophie. 



l88 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

So Mr. Brophy and his charge went into a box, and the 
girl agreed to curb her impatience till her coming should 
be broken quietly. 

Poor Uhlinger couldn't understand why the sympa- 
thetic Mrs. Knight asked him if he wouldn't be good 
enough to go into the dressing-room and fix up a bit, as 
she wanted him to go somewhere with her after the 
show. So his ruddy face shone with recent soap, and his 
gray, thin locks were carefully brushed, as the curtain 
was going up for the last time. 

Mrs. Knight called him to the wing and pointed out 
the girl in the box. 

" Seems to me I know that lady ; did you ever see her 
before, Uhlinger ? " 

" No, I can't say I have. And yet — and yet ! " 

The old man stood and gazed, as the actress was 
obliged to go on the stage. He couldn't take his eyes off 
that strange lady's face. All of a sudden he caught 
sight of the ruddy face and blond head of her escort, the 
Sergeant. Then came a tremor at his heart— an undefined 
thought. The poor man rushed up to the back as Mrs. 
Knight came off. 

" I know the party that lady is with. He's a good 
friend of mine. Oh, Mrs. Knight ! someway — I don't 
know," stammered out the old man. 

" Wait here for me," whispered Mrs. Knight. " The 
curtain is on the drop in just two minutes more. Wait 
here for me." 

And off she ran. The applause that followed came 
dimly to poor Uhlinger's ears, as he stood, getting each 
instant more nervous and dazed, as one thought after 
another presented itself. Past him flew one after the 
other of the company on the way to the dressing-rooms ; 
then George, his boyish face glowing with pleasure ; 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 1 89 

then Sophie, the tears ready to start in her laughing 
eyes ; then the well-put-up figure of the Sergeant, and 
beside him the charming, elegant young lady. 

" We've got a big surprise for you," began Knight. 

" Now, you mustn't " We shall never know what 

Mrs. Knight was going to say he mustn't do, for just as 
Brophy laid his hand on the old man's shoulder the 
young lady cried out : 

" Oh, father ! don't you know your daughter Annie ? 
I've come back to get you. I've come back ! " 

And she threw herself into his arms, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Knight turned away with tearful eyes, and Brophy went 
up stage and blew his nose like a trumpet. 

" Why," said he to me, " I've been taking in theatres 
all my days and have seen the tallest kind of emotional 
acting : long-lost fathers and returned daughters have 
fallen into each other's arms on the stage a hundred 
times before me ; but this was the real thing, and I 
wouldn't have missed it for the world." 



FIRST LOVE. 



I think the Lord had just finished the seasons when 
he made woman ; there's so much in her that is reminis- 
cent of the previous performance. The four seasons 
occur and are as natural in her life as the year's ; just as 
the other four seasons — pepper, salt, etc. — belong to the 
other sex. 

But the budding, blossoming, fruitful year is repro- 
duced in the changing lifetime of a woman. And these 
autumn days, with their soaking rains and close-following 
gusts of wind, that dim the glory of the year's maturity and 
strip the trees that they may reach their naked arms to 
Heaven when left defenceless in their age — why, what 
more like the tears and passion of a lovely woman, cry- 
ing out against the pitiless hand that is stealing her 
freshness and her beauty ? 

There's a catalpa tree beside my windows that I 
likened this year to a coy young girl. When sturdy 
maples stretched their welcoming green branches towards 
her, when a silver ash trembled with ill-concealed affec- 
tion for her, she stood until late in June with timid, half- 
decided buds breaking out all over her, when suddenly 
the air was filled with perfume, and Kate Alper was 
covered with white blossoms, like a bride. 

It was a beautiful honeymoon for all of us. 

We lived in an atmosphere heavy with sweets for one 
entire month. Then the maple, who had plainly won the 
coy. Kate, had what you might call a revulsion of feeling. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 191 

The servants said it was a " high wind." Anyway, two 
huge arms that had held her lovingly, broke close to the 
trunk, and fell down about her astonished roots. 

I went out and inspected the ghastly accident. 

" Was there vitality enough in the still adhering frag- 
ments to animate those branches if I just wired 'em into 
position?" I asked myself — and experience yelled 
" No," like the echoes in a cavern. 

Try to resuscitate corpses ; endeavor to teach the 
statues on monuments to read their own inscriptions ; 
seek to put an old, sour apple back into its blossom — but 
don't try to put a pair of arms around an object of past 
affection when once they have lost the hugging pro- 
clivity. 

So Kate was left without companionship, and, though 
other and younger green things courted her, she has been 
slowly dying all summer. 

To-day her crown is bleached ; the air is laden with 
withered leaves that, like unfulfilled hopes, are leaving 
her when most she needs 'em ; clumsy, fattening beans 
hang where the blossoms swung. She's old and ugly, 
and looking forward with some uncertainty to a resur- 
rection. 

I can't think of a thing to do or say to her that will 
comfort her, so I just go out and sing in a low, minor — 
Harry Miner — key : 

" It's a world of sorrow and sin, 
A world of trouble and care ; 
And the nicest crown a woman can win 
Is very unpleasant to wear.'" 

There's no nation on the earth that contains so many 
self-supporting, intelligent women as the Yankee one. 
In England, when John turns out a failure his Mary 



I92 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Ann accepts the situation, and lives along to a fat old 
age with the busted trust company, never thinking of 
taking the remedy into her own hands. 

But, good gracious ! Look at us ! About six women 
to the dozen are on their second lap before they quit the 
track. They give it a fair trial, but the grand majority 
finish their journey alone. 

I honestly believe the popular marriage certificate 
twenty years from now will have a divorce coupon attached, 
to cut off and use in six or twelve months. 

And very much of this is brought about by a prema- 
ture decision. Most of us who waited a reasonable time 
laughed to scorn the earlier objects of their idolatry. 

A man ignorantly says: "Let me be the first love of 
the girl I marry;" when the blessed goose, if he only knew 
it, would find his chances a great deal better if he was 
the fifteenth. 

In some of the cantons of Switzerland they don't 
allow parties to contract marriage until the girl is twenty- 
five. It's a wise dispensation of the law. It gives a girl 
a chance to have a few love affairs and find out what 
suits her. 

When the Gusher was thirteen she was madly in love 
with a young fellow who drove a baker's cart and served 
the rolls in the morning. He was underwitted — be sure 
of that ! for one day he suggested we should elope to 
Weathersfield, where his uncle was keeper of a feed-store 
and occasional preacher in a meeting-house. 

The prospect was simply delightful. To me that 
bake-cart driver, who always smelled of fried doughnuts, 
and had warts on his hands as big as his own tea-biscuit, 
seemed a fate supremely blest. 

Someway, a large order for sugar ginger-bread, given 
by a circus, deferred the elopement. I went to the circus, 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. I93 

and realized how inferior is first love to a really great 
second attachment. A spangled-trunked young man 
who threw a double somersault dethroned the baker boy. 
Fortunately, the departing circus cut short this affair of 
the heart, and I made up my mind, being in sight of 
fourteen, that I had escaped the follies of youth and 
knew what a grand, lasting, life-long affection was. 

I then met my fate. He was somewhat elderly and 
wore eye-glasses. I congratulated myself on having 
placed my heart on a man worthy its possession. For a 
long time — nearly six months — I believed all that was to 
arrive had arrived in my life. We were engaged. 

He was a sort of Casaubon, such as marches through 
" Middlemarch ; " and to bring sunlight into that man's 
existence was my sole object for a half year. The war 
gobbled this adorable being, and about thirty-six real, 
enduring, undying devotions occupied my affections 
during the next five years. Casaubon was wiped out. 
Here last week a card was brought up to me, and w r ith 
much difficulty its owner was hoisted into the apartments 
— a mummy of the Cheopean era. 

I looked at him in horror. Was this the hero whose 
dignity and priggishness had established him in my 
youthful esteem as a very superior person ? What an 
escape ! 

As I thought of the long years in w T hich, but for an all- 
wise Providence and an indignant parent, I might have 
been watching the dreadful change to the horrible, I 
fairly shuddered. 

So I made a mental note that the vast inventive ability I 
possess shall be directed to the construction of a machine 
that shall not, like Edison's, reproduce the utterances of 
the past, but shall forecast the changes of time and show 
a demented girl what sort of an old man she'll have in 
13 



194 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

twenty-five years, if she takes up with the present infatu- 
ation. 

A machine that can take an engaged young man and 
give him a private view of Emma Jane at the age of 
forty-five will work a big reformation in things matri- 
monial. 

All this is not to get into the Is-Marriage-a-Failure 
question, but to answer one a girl sends me. She " is 
fifteen and very mature for her years," and she asks, " Am 
I too young to marry? " 

And I say emphatically, yes! She'll be too young to 
marry until she's fifty, and then she'd better think she's 
too old, and so pull through and be comfortable. 



ABOUT DOGS. 



If any one can suggest an attachment — an anodyne or 
preventive— to attach to a dog to break him of eating 
shoes and boots, will he or she please forward it to the 
Gusher ? Around the halls of dazzling light occupied by 
the subscriber you can find hooks and shingle-nails galore. 
These are there for the purpose of suspending all foot- 
gear when it's out of use. Guests are usually informed, 
before taking their clothes off, that Mr. Perkins is a set- 
ter, addicted to a diet of Oxford ties. 

There are nights when I go to bed in a hurry, under 
an impression that the bed is trying to run away ; and on 
these occasions the hooks are neglected and the shoes 
reach the floor — a sad occasion, I assure you, for that's 
the end of 'em. Perkins breakfasts early on an indigesti- 
ble boot-heel and scraps of patent leather. 

Monday morning was a wild one chez moi. A wail 
came up the corridor from Eleanor Morretti. " Some one 
has carried off my boots ! " 

Simultaneously a cry came from the next room, and 
Madame Ponisi held up a shoe, half gone. 

In an instant I thought of my own pedal gear, and 
sprang up. The shoe drawer had been left open, and 
Perkins had fed ; some villanous instinct had led him to 
select one of each pair ; and a boot, a low shoe, and a 
slipper mourned its mate. 

Later in the day a sad-eyed woman appeared in a New 
York shop, wearing one Oxford tie and one Louis Quinze 



196 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

slipper. The fact that one was black kid and the other 
bronze added a keener pang to her misery, perhaps ; but 
she is learning that the lesson of life is one of sorrow. 
Dick (who is a railroad man) brought over to-day a super- 
annuated tin ticket-box, with a slot in the top and a pad- 
lock on the side. This he recommends as a boot and 
shoe repository, and it has been accepted and gone into 
immediate use in most of the rooms. 

As we sat on the piazza that evening the conversation 
turned on the mournful event of the morning, when Per- 
kins went through our effects ; and numerous were the 
anecdotes his exploits elicited. 

Edwin Forrest once told Madame Ponisi of his adven- 
ture with a boot-chewing dog. It was when he was very 
poor that he shared his hard fate with Brutus, a fine, 
fond retriever. An engagement was offered him while in 
Cincinnati to play in Dayton, and the embryo eminent 
accepted it. Alas ! railway fares were not provided, and 
all the sleepers his contract called for he found under the 
rails as he footed it from Cincinnati to Dayton in com- 
pany with Brutus. Footsore and weary, the actor and 
his dog reached a boarding-house and a bed, and Forrest 
slept sound and dreamless, you may be sure. But a 
horrible sight met his eye as he commenced to dress next 
morning. Brutus had feasted on his left boot ; there was 
little more than the straps and heel left, as evidence that 
he had ever had a left boot. 

This was not the era when a strapped actor could brace 
a box-office and ask for an advance. There was always 
an obtainable chance that the ghost would refrain from 
pedestrian exercise at the close of the week, and certainly 
no inducement for its taking the air so early in the 
engagement. 

Forrest knew all this. Not until the following Monday 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 197 

could he hope for boots, and his pride suggested an 
excuse for his bootless condition. He unpacked a russet 
sandal that inclosed his mighty foot in " The Gladiator." 
He vowed he had sprained his ankle, leaping from the car 
on its arrival at the Dayton depot. He went lame till salary 
day, and wore his sandal with a limp till he clutched the 
stamps to buy a new pair of boots — seven troubled days. 

Virginia Buchanan began to laugh as she told of a 
much worse predicament her father had once been in. 
He was on a tour ; and sending his trunks on, he went to 
spend Sunday with his wife and daughter, equipped with 
a hand-satchel and the suit of clothes on his back. 
Mother and daughter went to church, and returned at 
noon to find the tragedian in bed. 

" Why, this is simply dreadful ! " said Mrs. Buchanan ; 
"twelve o'clock and you are not up yet." 

" You can't expect a man to get up without his trousers, 
can you ? " growled the bed-ridden sufferer. " Look at 
my pants ! " 

They tried to, but there was so little left to look at 
that the invitation seemed thrown away. The favorite 
house-dog had ribboned those trousers ; and as McKean 
Buchanan was a very tall man he remained in bed most 
of the day, while a village tailor lengthened a pair in his 
stock to fit the requirements. 

Will Elsbre related his adventures. He had been off 
one warm day for a stroll, taking a pet bull-dog as com- 
panion, when he reached a quiet bend in the river, far 
from the haunts of man, and concluded to indulge in a 
swim. Grip was in the distance interested in the track 
of a mole ; so while his back was turned Elsbre stuck his 
umbrella into the ground and grouped his raiment round 
it. Having erected this monument to the cardinal virtues, 
he shouted to Grip to come and watch the wardrobe, and 



I98 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

took a header into the water. Grip trotted up, recog- 
nized his duty, and sat down on a shirt, like a girl on the 
Casino roof, determined not to leave till the show was 
over. Elsbre had a noble swim, and clambered out to 
dress. Not much ! Grip had no acquaintance with his 
master in that condition. He refused to recognize the 
voice and gestures of the distracted bather. Every time 
Elsbre got within ten feet of him the hair on Grip's back 
rose in a straight line. His teeth became the most 
prominent features of the landscape, and a curdling growl 
probed the adjacent air. 

For one mortal hour did Elsbre coax and cajole the 
beast, until, getting desperate, he began to throw stones. 
Grip deserted his post to take a short run, and Elsbre 
seized his pants, only to find that the agile animal had 
whipped back and got a death grip on one leg of 'em. 
Elsbre pulled, and the dog hung on. Of a sudden they 
parted, and Grip flew over the hills with the entire half of 
a pair of gray pants ! 

Consternation reigned in the Elsbre family when Grip 
landed on the piazza with the leg of gray trousers in his 
jaws. There was Will's note-book in the pocket ; there 
was his knife ; there was his cigarette case. Lamentation 
rent the air. As Grip had the trousers, a son and brother 
was gone — nothing left but half h ; s pants ! Then a 
search for the body was made, that resulted in finding 
young Elsbre on a sand-hill trying to make an off leg of 
trouser out of his coat sleeves. 

After this Julia Percy related the life and times of 
Puck. Puck w r as a tiny skye terrier the Gusher once 
gave her, and it inherited the slipper-slaughtering, boot- 
butchering instincts of its mother and father. Mrs. 
Percy and Puck on one occasion journeyed to Newton 
Falls, and the lady's vacation was filled with anxious care. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 199 

Her room opened on a piazza that girdled the house, and, 
on an average, Puck plunged through the window lugging 
some one's boot or shoe half a dozen times a day. 

The worry of returning property and the excitement of 
the chase kept the lady up in G most of the time. But 
Puck's prowess as a catcher of mice atoned for his 
depredations. 

In the next room to Mrs. Percy stopped a venerable 
couple, w T ho seemed to be idiots on the subject of mice. 
They would rap on the wall and shriek for Puck, as they 
climbed on chairs and waited for the small champion to 
come and collar a mouse the size of a chestnut. 

One day the old lady was ill, and the old gentleman 
went to a bureau drawer to get her a clean cap, when he 
spied a mouse in the corner of it, and, hastily shutting 
it, sounded the usual battle-cry of " Puck ! Puck ! " In 
rushed the vigilant, and the old man carefully opened the 
dreadful drawer, and in plunged Puck. 

" Shake it up ! " shouted the old man. 

Julia stood on a chair with gathered skirts, and cried, 
" Sick him ! " 

But it was a " Sick her ! " when Puck emerged; for he 
had torn the false front of the invalid into 20,000 hairs ; 
and Ma lay abed while Pa took some of the " mouse " 
up to Helmer and had another toupee made before she 
could enter polite society. 

Sidney Rosenfeld then told of Spider and the late con- 
vulsions in his peaceful home. Spider is a bull-dog, but 
a bull-dog of such a languid, cataleptic nature that he 
gradually got himself despised for his gentleness. Sidney, 
the other day, between the verses of a topical song, 
addressed himself to the dog, and anathematized his 
milk-and-water character. 

" You are a doglet that's a blotlet on your race ! " said 



200 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

he. " There's no fightlet in your makelet ; there's no 
bloodlet in your eyelet, despite the dotlet on your 
eye." 

And Spider got up and went out to the barn, and 
engaged in an encounter with a big mongrel retainer, and 
licked him, and got a taste for gore, and ran amuck 
through Yonkers eating dog. 

This unexpected change of base kept the Rosenfeld 
family busy. Spider is at last around ; he's fighting 
everything. Mrs. Rosenfeld took a meek and lowly 
follower of the Lord out to air him after the family 
horse, followed by the family dog Spider. 

They journeyed to a neighboring village, and the par- 
son was speaking instructively of the work of St. Paul in 
Ephesus, when Spider clinched with a yaller dog. The 
yelps brought, as usual, recruits from all directions. The 
parson got out, and broke up the carriage-whip. Mrs. 
Rosenfeld got out and sought to grasp Spider's tail. The 
natives gathered, and they reviled the parson for coming 
over there to have dog-fights. Finally, torn, bloody, but 
victorious, Spider abandoned his victim, and went home 
behind the chariot-wheels, a disgraceful spectacle of the 
triumph of brute force. 

Mrs. Rosenfeld wants a recipe to make Spider return 
to the pristine amiability that animated him before Sidney 
roused his spirit ; and I want a cure for boot-chewing, 
before it gets too cold to go barefoot. 

Did I ever tell you how I became possessed of one of 
my most faithful and best-loved dog friends ? 

It was a good many years ago — in the spring, I think 
— that I went down Broadway in my best clothes. It 
was a brand-new costume. I was a streak of velvet and 
jet. and on such good terms with myself that I thank- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 201 

fully accepted my reflection as I passed the shop win- 
dows. 

It was to look at my satisfactory condition that I 
paused somewhere about Ninth Street at a dry-goods 
store display. Against some black goods in a show-case 
I came out in great form ; but behind the show-case lay 
curled a dog, the most miserable specimen of the ash- 
barrel kioodle I ever beheld. 

Want had pinched him ; hunger had collapsed his 
flues ; some wretch had scalded him ; he was deserted, 
friendless, and utterly forlorn. He raised his eyes 
humbly and hungrily to mine, and met a glance that 
caused him to feebly thump a thank with his hairless 
stump of a tail. I felt a lump in my throat and a ten- 
pence in my pocket, and I marched round the first cor- 
ner and walked till I struck a butcher shop. I invested 
in some well-chopped beef, and concealing a good big 
paper horn of it in my parasol I trotted back to Lazarus, 
shook out the meat in a grateful stream under his nose, 
and departed, better pleased with myself than before, if 
such a thing could be. 

About Fourteenth Street I began to see people pass 
me in a strange way. Admiration sat on their coun- 
tenances as they approached. As they got even with 
me, a smile of ridicule spread like a plaster over their 
faces. 

" Good Lord ! " thought I ; "am I losing anything off ? 
Has anything burst in the rear ? Something surely is 
the matter with my — behind me." I felt. I tried to 
investigate the difficulty. All at once I looked in the 
shop windows. One glance explained the truth. That 
dog was as close to me as if he'd been tied to my sash. 
He put his feet down in my tracks. We were doing the 
Sing Sing lock-step up Broadway. 



202 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Ye gods ! but he was a spectacle. The meat had 
taken effect, not on his body, but his affections. I jumped 
into an omnibus. He laid his head on the lower step 
and came right along. I flew to my home, and he weakly 
turned into the same street. I got in and up-stairs, when 
the girl told me a dog was taking the skin off the front 
door in an effort to get in. 

It was fate ! I invited Lazarus to the back yard, and 
he lived for many happy years, until death claimed him, 
an awful specimen of what nature can do in building 
dogs — but the attached, valued friend of the Gusher. 



THE BEST TIME TO DIE. 



I don't know that those hilarious young people are 
far wrong who take the elderly members of their families 
to the banks of the Ganges and stop up their eyes and 
ears with sacred mud and leave them for the crocodiles 
to attend to. I see so many old pumps making them- 
selves ridiculous, that it is a matter of regret that the 
Hudson River doesn't furnish the right sort of mud for 
the stuffing process. 

I have been lately assisting in a lodge of sorrow cele- 
brated by four sisters. Their mother died eight years 
ago, and for eight years they have kept a marvellous 
house, set an irreproachable table, dressed the old man 
like an advertisement for a Troy laundry, and made the 
most agreeable home a miserable old he- sinner ever had. 
In April last they took in, out of charity, the overgrown, 
gawky daughter of their washer-woman. 

Linda was a flaxen-haired, snub-nosed, Teutonic dam^ 
sel of sixteen. She washed dishes, ran errands, and was 
a sort of maid-of -all- work to the mature old party who 
cooked and did the heavy business in the family. 

Old Pa owns a farm over near Orange, in New Jersey, 
and it has been the custom to retire to this abode in June 
and stay there till October. In June they all departed, 
taking the faithful cook, and leaving Linda in the city 
house, to which Linda's ma also went, to keep it till 
the family returned in the fall. Last August one of the 
daughters came into the city, shopping, and I met her at 



204 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

a dry-goods counter. It occurred to me that I had met 
Pa once or twice during the summer, so I said : " Your 
father is not out at Orange with you, is he ? " 

" Oh, yes ! but he's been making alterations in the 
house on Sixty-third Street ; so he has been in town fre- 
quently," replied Miss . I didn't tell her that I'd 

seen him at Wallack's and Coney Island with one of the 
" alterations." Old Poppy was just about the age when 
they stuff 'em with mud along the Ganges, and, of 
course, was making the usual fool of himself. 

I bade my friend good-by, and heard nothing more 
till last week, when the four sisters turned up in a state 
of mental woe bordering on distraction. 

It seems a neighbor wrote 'em that Pop and Linda were 
seen continually together ; that Linda occupied the best 
room, as they saw by the gas in the window, evenings ; 
that she sat in the parlors, and had taken all the linen 
covers off the furniture, and that their ma's picture was 
gone from over the piano in the front of the house, as 
they had discovered by observations from the street and 
back yard. 

The girls piled into town. Alas ! too true was the 
information. The dreadful, snub-nosed, freckle-faced, 
sixteen-year-older was boss ! 

" You dreadful creature ! " cried Minerva, who is 
twenty-five. " Pick up your clothes and leave this 
house." 

" Not much," returned Linda. "I was more to home 
here as you. I vas married to your fader more as six 
weeks. Dere vas my marriage bapers." 

Sure enough, the old noodle had married the girl ; and 
the former washer-woman was mother-in-law, and on 
deck, as poor Minerva found. 

Poppy is seventy-two years old, and manages his busi- 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 205 

ness with intelligence. There's no ground for a lunatico 
inquirendo, that I can see ; but he ought to be stuffed — 
there's no doubt about that ! 

****** 

The doctrine of euthanasia is not a bad one ; but much 
better it would be for a lot of theatrical people, if, with 
unimpaired powers, they stepped down and out. 

How many thousands who saw Ristori, when, in the 
grandeur of tragic strength, she played at the Fourteenth 
Street Theatre, but who witnessed a shaky old woman's 
struggle with a strange language in which she was badly 
worsted — can believe what a gorgeous actress she used to 
be! 

Had it pleased the gods to strike down John McCul- 
lough as he left the stage one night in the flowing robes 
of Virginius, what " an end devoutly to be wished " it 
would have been ! 

Then the pomp, and the pageantry, and the big fune- 
ral, and the columns and columns of adulatory reminis- 
cences in the papers ! 

Instead, a weekly report of imbecile utterances ; a 
description of the enfeebled man tottering, step by step, 
downward all the time ; statements of the terrible indica- 
tions of a wrecked mind and dying body, harrowing those 
who remember him with tenderness. Finally, a going 
out of the flickering light, and a quiet laying away, by 
those who cannot say "We are sorry he is dead " ! Then 
the obituary record of his life, its work, its triumph and 
its slow destruction — a column that has been set up in 
every newspaper office in the country for months, await- 
ing the end ! 

There are numberless members of the profession scat- 
tered about the world, in alms-houses, insane asylums, 
charity hospitals, and the like, who in their time have been 



206 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

the favorites of the fickle public, but, forgotten and for- 
saken, having outlived their usefulness, they linger on the 
scene unloving and unloved — to what purpose? They 
are burdens to themselves and the world. Ah ! if they 
had only died while yet the bloom was on 'em ! Descend- 
ants would like to speak of " My uncle, the celebrated 
artist, who died " ; and the Lord knows they will 
never mention " My uncle, who is just now on the Island," 

or " My aunt, Mrs. , now insane " ! It makes a 

heap of difference, I tell you. 

I think a most admirable characteristic is that which 
induced John Matthews, in a burst of prosperity, to go 
and get measured for his coffin and pay his funeral 
expenses. He won't die any the sooner, and he carries 
the receipt in his pocket — a potent charm to cheer many 
an impecunious hour. 

There's the coffin, finished years ago, standing up in 
the undertaker's shop and seasoning. There'll be no 
unpleasant shrinkage or warping to annoy him. The 
latest fashion in trimmings can be run in when wanted for 
use. They will just polish up the plate and add one 
word and a few figures to the legend upon it, and genial, 
erudite Johnny, with his Latin quotations, will rest all the 
happier that he left little for friends to do but lay their 
flowers and regrets on the coffin he bought years ago for 
himself. 

We all remember Adelaide Neilson, radiantly lovely— 
the ideal Juliet ! As I write her name there seems to 
float back to me, amid the hum of a thousand approv- 
ing voices, the odor of sweet flowers, so indissoluble are 
the words triumph, tribute, and Neilson. 

The greatness of Heron's past was dimmed by the 
later exhibitions of her decadence. I always see her as 
I saw her last — dishevelled, gray, obese, and generally 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 207 

broken up and down; called out at a benefit at Niblo's 
Garden, indulging in a maudlin, sentimental wail before 
the footlights, and then deliberately sitting on the stage, 
so overcome with emotion was she. How much better 
had she been called earlier off the scene! 

I mind me of a man who struggled for years amid the 
poverty of journalism, with a pleasant wife and promising 
children to urge him to further endeavor. In an unex- 
pected hour success perched upon his banner, and with 
astonishing rapidity he made a fortune. 

He was far from being an Adonis, but, like my friend 
old Pop, money made him attractive. He found a 
younger woman than madame, who had shared youth 
and poverty with him. 

The spectacle of this gaunt gallant and this shrewd 
young party has been constantly seen about town. 

A lady who had crossed the Atlantic a year or two 
before with him and his family sat with me, about six 
months ago, in a certain theatre. 

"Why, there's Mr. ," said she, recognizing the 

newly made rich man. " Who's the girl ? He has no 
daughter.'' 

Some member of the party made a pertinent reply, and 
my friend held up her hands in dismay as she remarked: 

" Well, I'm beginning to doubt there is a Providence, 
as I see the faithful, helpful wives and mothers forsaken 
in their waning health and strength by these wretched 
men. Why, that chit wouldn't look at that crane if he 
hadn't made a little money ! " 

Ah, well ! The retributive justice is comirlg along very 
steadily. u The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they 
grind exceeding fine." 



A SPECIMEN BOARDING-HOUSE. 



The Gusher, thank Heaven ! knows little about board- 
ing-houses, and she means to know less before she knows 
more ; but she has just had a short experience that will 
furnish forth a few remarks to her congregation. 

Miss Snip and her ma board at Mrs. Huckleberry's 
high-toned establishment, and misfortune elected that 
my lot should be cast among 'em the entirety of Wednes- 
day last. The widow of a General Somebody and the 
relict of the Rev. Hebron Waters have the second floor ; 
two extremely swell young theological students and an 
old maid hang out on the third; Miss Snip and ma occupy 
the back, and the front parlor is to rent, with first-class 
board and a turn-up bedstead. Miss Snip and ma said 
it would be " sweet for me and Ichabod," if Ichabod 
could be brought to* think so. 

Anyway, I was to try a visit to the Snips' and see how 
I liked it. Miss Huckleberry showed me the "apart- 
ments," as she called 'em. There was a sort of arch 
thrown up in the ceiling that constituted the saloon par- 
lor — two rooms, in the landlady's eyes. My soul revolted 
at the mechanical apparatus she exhibited as the bed and 
put through its paces. On first acquaintance this affair 
looked like x an etagere, " An Etegerry bedstead," Gen- 
eral Somebody's widow called it. Mrs. Huckleberry 
pulled some stops and valves, detached the front, and it 
became a wash-stand. She turned some cranks and 
shoved some bolts, and it turned gracefully on end, and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 209 

there were four pillows, their flues collapsed by mutual 
pressure. Then a second crank and cog-wheel began the 
work of uncoiling. The thing stretched out and yawned 
till it fell at my feet, a bed all made up. 

" It's beautiful! " said Mrs. Huckleberry. I allowed all 
that, but asked her what guarantee she gave that it 
wouldn't get a-going during the night and turn into a 
step-ladder or a fire-escape ? 

She said, with a lack of confidence, that it never had 
done so as yet. The Rev. Thomas Miraculous had 
slept in it all winter. This reference didn't establish my 
faith. An " Etegerry " bedstead might get through the 
winter safely with the Rev. Thomas, and yet be roused 
by the Gusher in one week to flights of fancy surpassing 
those in Young's " Night Thoughts." 

However, I passed on the bed, and she ordered up the 
dinner. Oh ! how sweetly swell we w T ere. The widow 
of the Rev. Hebron Waters, in a dyed purple silk, with a 
portrait like a door-plate, of the late Hebron in his robes, 
on her bosom. I had Pinky Fay with me, and she asked 
promptly " who the old man in his night-gown was ? " 
Miss Snip and ma sat up like Stoughton-bottles lashed in 
by new spring frocks, till a swallow of water pinched 'em 
like a soldier-crab. The two students, buttoned up to 
the neck with clerical collars, and steel-bowed eye-glasses, 
looked like breeding a famine at their end of the table. 
The relict of Hebron asked a blessing (just a little one, 
to go round the corner w T here she and Mrs. General took 
their food), and the feast began. Mrs. General praised 
everything, and I must think she owes a board-bill. 

" This Jumbo soup is delicious," moaned that lady, as 
she tasted a grayish fluid that was offered as gumbo. 

" Is this Jumbo's soup? " asked Pinky. 

" Little children should be seen and not heard," said 



2IO THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

Mrs. Huckleberry. (Pinky climbed on her chair and raised 
both arms.) 

"How is Jumbo soup made? " murmured Miss Snip, 
blushing and looking at the sickest of the two theological 
students. 

" What a question, sis ! One would think you was 
going to housekeeping," laughed the jolly old Mrs. Gen- 
eral. 

" Could you make Jumbo soup, Miss Gusher ? " 

" I could make this, I think, by soaking one of Bar- 
num's advertisements in a pail of water over night/' I said 
authoritatively. This created discussion. The fish was 
brought in, a nice little creature boiled in a bucket of 
thin paste, with a lemon at his head and a sprig of green 
at his tail. 

" How did he get drowned ? " asked Pinky. 

All the boarders picked at a dab of this course, and 
looked hungrily at the sideboard where Mr. Huckleberry 
was carving a piece of beef with such care and dexterity 
that I felt sure his place was in a hospital — not a boarding- 
house. Eight leaves of salad and a hard-boiled egg were 
placed before Johnny Nicodemus, the theological student. 
" Do make the salad for us to-day! " chirped Mrs. Huckle- 
berry. " You have no idea, dear Miss Gusher, what a 
delicious salad he makes ! " 

I thought by the size of it, it was unlikely I ever should, 
as there were ten of us to help, and not a leaf would be 
left to leave me to judge by the time it reached the 
head of the table. 

The price of spring vegetables became the topic of 
conversation, and Hebron's widow and Mrs. General 
betrayed a nervous anxiety and an amount of information 
about the markets that can only be entertained by people 
half starved. I can imagine Robinson Crusoe fishing up 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 211 

a newspaper washed inshore from some passing vessel, 
and sitting down and reading about lamb and green pease 
and the latest way of serving French artichokes. His 
expression was on the faces of these poor boarding 
women. I began to feel depressed, and when a wedge 
of pie was handed me and a teaspoonful of ice-cream laid 
beside my plate, and Pinky began to plead to go home to 
Mamma McGiven, who was making a plum-pudding that 
day, I escaped with the little child, promising to send a 
note in the morning about the " apartments." 

Now, Mrs. Huckleberry had fine service and cut-glass 
and decorated china, and a waiter in white cotton gloves, 
w T hose thumb gave such little flavor to the dishes as the 
dishes boasted. An aristocratic taste pervaded the halls. 
There was much that was aesthetic about the rugs and por- 
tieres, the panels and the screens. All were on their 
good behavior, and I could have thrown the house into fits 
by bringing in a few cases of Pommery Sec to last over a 
Sunday reunion. I think a small bottle would provide 
an orgie of the wildest kind for the water-color family of 
Mrs. Huckleberry. 



OUR PROFESSORS OF DRAMATIC ART. 



I had a call last week from Mrs. P. C. Pokeberry and 
her daughters. Some idea of their ages may be arrived 
at by their names : the eldest is Amanda Malvina Poke- 
berry, and the baby of the family is called Pamela. Now 
" Pamela " was a fashionable novel in the early part of the 
last century, and that cherished work of fiction called 
" The Children of the Abbey " was contemporary. 
Amanda Malvina Fitzallen was the heroine of the latter. 
I once said to an old lady standing by a horsehair trunk 
on which, in brass nails, was the name " A. M. F. Welles,'* 
" I want to bet you a doughnut your front name is 
Amanda Malvina Fitzallen," and she laughed and said, 
"yes, her mother had been a great novel-reader, and 
was a romantic woman." Therefore you can judge that 
Pamela Pokeberry is no spring chicken ; but you can't 
judge of my fourth-proof astonishment when I learned 
that Pamela intended going upon the stage. 

These ladies descended on me from a little hamlet 
called Lansingburg, up in this State. They had been 
into Troy and Albany, on great occasions, and witnessed 
what Ma Pokeberry styled the " draymay," as presented 
by Joseph Proctor and kindred spirits. It seems there 
used to be a Green Street Theatre in Albany, run by one 
Captain Smith ; and he, or some one in the box-office, 
was related to the Pokeberrys by marriage. Through 
this means my friends had seen a good deal of acting. 
It had finally wakened the artistic yearning in the 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 213 

bosom of Pamela. The family had been struggling 
with this wayward girl till they got afraid she was 
showing signs of despondency. So they gave in 
to her great desire ; and, believing I was just the 
party to put 'em on the right track — as I say, they called 
on me. 

I looked at Pamela — a tall, raw-boned woman, with 
dust-colored hair and boiled-onion eyes, a nose border- 
ing on the pug, and a mouth full of the best store-teeth 
to be found in Albany. 

"Can it be possible," thought I, "that this terror 
is so blind that she takes that mug for a fashion- 
plate ? " 

The thought was answered by Ma, who said : " Mely 
is a beautiful figgur, and the pieces she has spoke to 
entertainments in our hall have took with everybody. 
There ain't any doubt but she can act out as well as the 
best on 'em after a few lessons." 

Then it came out they were in pursuit of a teacher. 
So I gracefully acceded, and went with Mely to inter- 
view some of the professors of dramatic art. We parted 
with Ma and Mandy at Twenty-third Street, by the Fifth 
Avenue Hotel, and Mely imparted to me the astounding 
information that they were going to Caswell's to get 
some of Dixey's Salve. Now the night before they had 
all been to the Bijou, and I had heard unbounded praises 
of the "plaster-parish man," as Ma called Dixey. She 
had regretted an exposure of the leg made by Miss Car- 
son. At this Pokeberry said : " Them uncertain sewing- 
machines, always a-ripping, was the cause of it ; for the 
poor gal's dress was ripped nigh to the waist, and only 
that she had powerful long stockings on, it would have 
been ondecent." But the performance otherwise had 
delighted 'em, and the plaster-parish man, Dixey, was just 



214 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

too splendid ! So now they were going to get some of 
his salve. 

This was beyond me. Dixey's Salve? I questioned 
my stage-struck old girl. " Why, certainly, salve — it was 
advertised on the curtain." They had asked the usher 
what that salve advertised on the curtain was for, and he 
told 'em "corns." They have evidently got a humorist 
up at the Bijou who interprets the Latin to suit his 
customers. 

Mely and I went on our way. I had forgotten to say 
that the Pokeberrys are wealthy, and Mely gave evidence 
of her condition in the way of sealskin and by diamond 
ear-rings. I was piloting no impecunious young miss, 
but a well-fixed old damsel who was willing and able to 
pay for being a crank. We had taken the names of a lot 
of actor-builders, who had been on the boards them- 
selves — a few professors who couldn't do it themselves, 
but could teach others how to. 

The first party we tackled was a playful creature of 
sixty-five, who giggled a great deal, and told Mely that 
Rosalind was her pie, and she would be perfectly charm- 
ing in Beatrice — her voice was so light and pleasing, 
and the roguish dimple in her cheek would add much to 
the vivacity of such characters. 

Mely confidentially informed me that a vicious hen 
had pecked a piece out of her cheek, when she tried to 
douse her off a nest on which she persistently set with 
no greater inducement than a china door-knob under 
her. This scar our obliging old teacher took for a dim- 
ple. Now, Mely's aspirations were for something grand 
and terrible — she wanted to be, as far as I could make 
out, a female Jibbenainosay. The flippant dame, who 
shook some gray curls at us and hopped this way and 
that as she said — " but then there was a star danced, and 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 215 

under that was I born," made a very unfavorable impres- 
sion on Mely. So we made very little pause at this 
establishment, but struck out for No. 2. 

No. 2 was a dapper little gentleman, who rolled his 
r's and made eyes at us. He said the full value of the 
consonants was the key-note of an actor's success ; 
that gesticulation was obsolete — positively no action 
was necessary — repression of the physical, with mental 
emphasis, was the article demanded by an advanced civili- 
zation. He asked Miss Pamela to recite a selection, and 
I nearly fainted when she began Collins' "Ode to the 
Passions," in 3,000 lines. She howled through Rage to 
Jealousy ; when she came to Grief I begged her to desist, 
as it was too much for me — a great deal too much. She 
asked my pardon for harrowing up my feelings so, but 
said she supposed the professor wanted to judge of her 
power. As he didn't want to enter her for a walking 
match, he told her he could form a good idea of her 
endurance without going any further. But "her con- 
ception was all wrong ; her intonation entirely false ; her 
enunciation wholly faulty. The full value of the con- 
sonants should be her first study. Master them, and 
the rest, including a first-class engagement and star parts, 
will follow naturally. You need a full course of instruc- 
tion, miss," said he. 

" How long a time does that require ?" asked I. 

" From three to four years, according to the density 
of the pupil," returned he. That settled Mely ; she 
wants to act this spring, and come out with the apple- 
blossoms. We promised to call again and skipped. 

The next professor was a lady, who had a sepulchral 
voice and tragic gestures. 

" Your friend has great capacity for the higher walks 
of the profession," said she to me ; and I immediately 



2l6 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

thought she meant to train Mely to be a Man Fly and 
do the ceiling act, when she went on to say that her face 
and figure admirably fitted her to essay " The Fair Peni- 
tent " or " The Mourning Bride. ,, When I mentioned their 
possible unattractiveness as plays, she coldly informed 
me that her business was to educate the people up to 
that standard, and she was pursuing her avocation with 
that amount of success that she was justified in furnish- 
ing the high-class article there would so soon be a 
demand for. 

This sounded reasonable, and Mely began to question 
her about the toilets worn by the Fair Penitent, and was 
shown a production of the professoress in this charac- 
ter. The sight of that old-timer closed the interview. 
We got old molly-grub's terms, and we fled. 

Then we tried two actors — sterling artists of enormous 
ability — that managers dare not engage, as they are too 
rich for their blood. The fat one gargled and the lean 
one crackled at us. They both said Mely betrayed great 
talent, and, they thought, had a career before her if she 
went upon the stage. One recommended her to essay 
such roles as Fanchon and La Cigale, as her nose was so 
adapted for such parts, and the other advised her to 
study Lucrezia Borgia and Lady Macbeth, as she had 
great tragic possibilities about her mouth. 

Mely finally thought she would try one other teacher 
before settling with either of these old he-landmarks, 
and we went off up-town to see a certain reputable actress, 
who is going to teach the young idea how to act. We 
found the lady and stated the case. 

" What characters have you seen that you think you 
would like to play ? " asked she. 

" Well," said Mely, " I think there's a good chance for 
any one in Juliet j but I should dress her modern. I 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 217 

never could abide to wear such clothes as most of the 
Juliets I see wear/' 

" You're not young enough for Juliet" said the fatally 
frank actress. 

" 1 don't see why I could not make myself look young 
on the stage. They all do," retorted Mely, with much 
vinegar. 

" There's no make-up known to the theatrical pro- 
fession that can make you look like Juliet. You might 
do Lady Capulet; but certainly that's the only part in that 
play you can hope to meddle with. It is throwing away 
money to pay for lessons ; they can do you no good. 
You are much too old to think of going on the stage, and 
the only lines of business a manager would tolerate you 
in, those of second old women, or utility, are already 
crowded with people whose experience will get them 
positions before your claims are heard. I can't for the 
life of me see why you should dream of anything so wild 
at your age. If you have a comfortable home and means 
to keep it, I should advise you to do almost anything 
before attempting to get upon the stage." 

" I believe you advertise for pupils ? " put in Mely, 
angry, as a woman scorned is apt to be. 

" I do," retorted the actress, calmly. " I shall be very 
glad to procure them ; but I shall never waste my time 
nor another woman's money fostering a crazy ambition 
that can never amount to anything more than disappoint- 
ment and regret on both sides." 

Mely is not discouraged. She is going to appear with- 
out instruction. She heard one professor discourse on 
teaching the art analytically. She doesn't know what 
that is, but it must be simple or he wouldn't have laid so 
much stress on his method. The same man said his 
principles were derived from nature ; and so Mely, like 



2l8 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

the Irish Alderman who opposed buying several gon- 
dolas for the park lake, but " belaved in getting a male 
and a faymale gondola and letting nature take its coorse," 
will rely on these principles and let nature take its 
course. 



THE HORRORS OF MOVING. 



There's no mortal sort of doubt in my mind that the 
woman who keeps house twenty years and moves once 
every five years, goes at the end of her time into a nice 
rosewood coffin with satin trimmings, content, willing- 
glad to go and escape truckmen and carpet-cleaners. I 
believe that if any one brought in a first-class casket just 
now — the plumbing in it all right, the gas all on, the 
hinges working easy, the decorations fresh and becoming, 
I'd get in by myself and lay a stuffed dove on my 
stomach, I'm so disgusted, so sick and sorry, so weary 
and worn out with the inevitable horror of moving. 
"Three removes are as bad as a fire," says the proverb. 
Are they ? Well, this one flitting of mine lays as far 
over the burning of Moscow as the telegraph wires over 
the clothes-lines. 

I have been the prey of more scoundrelly tradespeople; 
I have fallen into the clutches of more knaves during the 
last ten days of my life, than in any ten previous years. 
About the merry month of May a swarm of defrauders, 
like the locusts of Egypt, swoop down upon the unwary 
house-keeper. And, oh ! how they gobbled the Gusher ! 
Some one advised the repairing of all damaged furniture 
before moving. She paid out something like fifteen dollars 
for casters on the legs of chairs. Some one else recom- 
mended carpet renovaters. She was struck by a gayly 
painted cart from some Broadway deceiver named Smith, 
who toted off her floor furniture and brought it back 



220 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

several degrees dirtier than it ever was before, and with a 
bill that shook up the Gusher's nervous system much 
better than he had shaken the carpets. 

Three guileless-looking men, with cots on their knees, 
put them down in the new house and came round with a 
bill of twenty more dollars. Painters, paperers, cleaners, 
and kalsominers daubed about and shirked work, but 
never failed to turn up with tremendous bills on Saturday 
night. 

Thursday will be a day long remembered. Ichabod 
packed a pair of slippers and fell over exhausted, while 
some one sent for a cab to convey him to his club. He 
rattled away as gay and debonair as if moving day was 
a festival which he had established. 

This was the last pleasing incident of the twenty-four 
hours. Men and trucks filled in the rest of it. An 
atmosphere of oaths, beer, and tobacco pervaded the 
place. A crash occurred with extreme regularity, and I 
discovered that a man with a centre -table in his arms can 
swear harder and oftener than under any other circum- 
stances. 

About eight o'clock on that fateful night, amid the 
thickening shadows, one might have descried a delicate 
form, with a section of stove-pipe and the cover of a 
refrigerator, a plaster cast of George Washington, and a 
smut spot on the end of her nose. That was the utterly 
broken-up Gusher, going to her new house ! 

This experience has not been without its interesting 
lesson. The Gusher will buy new chairs next time ; 
they come cheaper than casters. The Gusher will kill 
the carpet-renovater before he ever gets a rug of hers 
out of the house. It will be cheaper and pleasanter to 
bury him in the back yard than to pay him at the front 
door. The Gusher will never move again. She will 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 221 

give her traps away. She will have a bonfire of 'em. 
She will raffle 'em off as if they were eight-day clocks or 
turkeys ; but she will never, never move again ! 

The Tribmie is authority for a statement that awakens 
a ray of hope in my heart. The Sunday issue of that 
journal tells us of a new scheme to be put into operation 
at once. It promises a big kitchen, centrally located, a 
first-class chef at its head and a regiment of cooks under 
him, a lot of patent wagons full of steam-pipes and ice- 
boxes, to enable 'em to deliver soups hot and salads cold. 
It assures us a fine bill of fare at reasonable rates, and 
holds out a hope of rescue from incompetent Biddies 
to a thousand anxious house-keepers. Professor Blot 
promised all this long ago. He talked wisely of hot 
boxes covered with felt (a want long felt), of hampers 
fed with heat, and feed kept hot with lead. This 
naturally led us to believe in great things ; but the ful- 
filment of his promises never came. 

May that benignant fate that sits up aloft ordain the 
success of this scheme ! Life would become a dream of 
bliss if only soups could be turned on at faucets like hot 
and cold water, and steaks be cut off in sections as they 
do the tape from the ticker. But men will bend their 
gigantic inventive powers to the perfecting of a machine 
to make cocktails, or a self-acting swearer, or an auto- 
matic poker-player. 



A RECOLLECTION OF CHILDHOOD. 



Thirty years ago by the town clock the little two- 
and-a-half -foot Gusher was led by the hand into a hotel 
parlor where a select concert was given. A certain Mr. 
Strakosch played the piano ; a little Russian named 
Miska Hansen did the fiddle to fits, and a small girl my 
own size, black as an ink-bottle, with a pair of yellow 
satin pantalettes on her slim legs, stood by the pianist's 
side and sang : " Ah ! Non Giunge." There was a lump 
like an Adam's apple in the little creature's throat, and 
no canary ever had a sweeter voice. 

We played next day together on a balcony of the 
hotel, and I lost my child's heart to Adelina Patti. The 
Gusher had a noble voice of mammoth proportions, that 
could be heard (and often was) a mile away. We organ- 
ized an opera company immediately, and sang, " Take 
Now this Ring/' till every one in the neighborhood 
thought it was a twenty-four-foot rope one, and a prize 
fight was coming off under their pious Connecticut 
noses. 

Just as this combination of Patti and Gusher got well 
under way, a famous painter and a splendid singer 
entered our improvised opera-house and stopped the 
performance. 

" Don't do that, my child," he said to Adelina. " You 
will strain and injure your voice ; and that voice will yet 
hang your neck with diamonds as big as your handsome 
eyes. That voice will call all the world to kneel at your 
feet, and the world will obey. ,, 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 223 

I knew blessed well it was the yellow satin pantalettes 
that would subjugate the world. I gave in to that, but 
the jewels I made a stand at. 

" And mustn't I strain my voice, father ? " I asked. 
" Will my voice ever call the world to kneel ? " 

" I think it will call 'em to stand and deliver," answered 
that virile parent ; " for if nature ever fitted out at birth 
a natural highwayman, an incipient pirate, an embryo 
free-lance, here it is ! " and he laid his hand tenderly on 
my snarly head. 

The little Patti left that country town on the next day, 
Monday, and the Gusher mourned her till Tuesday, 
when she transferred her affection to Charles Freeman, 
the American giant, who, in company with an India- 
rubber man, came to the hotel for show purposes. 



AN INGERSOLL LECTURE. 



I went Sunday night to hear Ingersoll tell all about 
Liberty — as if I didn't know all about it, and didn't take 
all sorts of liberties with everything and everybody ! 

If Ingersoll had studied his background I think he 
would have altered the position of some of his similes. 

He made a very telling argument by saying that in all 
things we had progressed the last five thousand years, 
save in religion. He described the first man in his dug- 
out, through all the transitions of nautical achievements, 
till he reached the magnificent vessel breasting the ocean 
with steam and sail, to-day. He described the primitive 
tom-tom, and said if the man who beat it had said, " This 
is the one perfect instrument, dropped, by an enraptured 
performer in heaven, upon earth ; no improvement shall 
be made ; the hair of the horse and the intestines of the 
cat shall have no voice in the matter ! " why, we would 
to-day be without our Albert Weber, and devoid of our 
William Steinway. Ovide Musin would be without an 
occupation, and Dave Braham never been heard of. 

Then he spoke of the sharpened arrow-head, the cross- 
bow, the arquebus, the blunderbus, the mitrailleuse, and 
the last cannon, which carries a detonating, combusting 
cartridge through a stone wall and round a corner. 
Then he said that the skulls, from that of the man in the 
dug-out to that of the inventor of the needle-gun, had 
undergone the same change ; and naturally we began to 
examine the heads on the stage. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 225 

As compared with the orator of the evening, it was the 
man in the dug-out and the inventor all over again. 
And 'way down at the end was a man with a particularly 
small top-knot. Every time Ingersoll wanted to return 
to the seed of his argument, he said : " And here, my 
friend in the dug-out " — or, " The man with the small 
skull " ; and he would come down to the very chair, with 
outstretched hands, as if to lay 'em on that special 
cocoanut. 

As middle-man of the first row, was a tall, big old 
fellow who approved heartily of every sentiment, and 
beamed his approbation ; and on his right sat a sour 
brother, who had by accident got on the stage, a man 
who thought he knew it all, and was, as Ingersoll said, 
"orthodox in consequence." This was a bad lot. A 
cynical sneer played on his Mephistophelean counte- 
nance at Ingersoll's best joke ; and when the philosopher 
launched his most irrefutable arguments against the doc- 
trines of Calvin and Luther, he looked unutterable things, 
and moved in his seat as if to say : " If I should get on 
my hind legs, what would become of yon orator ? " 

After the manner of " Pilgrim's Progress," I christened 
all the occupants of the chairs. There was Mr. Ready 
Believer ; there was Stiffneckstickitout ; there was Little 
Skullthinksmall ; there was Pugnaciouskickback ; and 
then I drew comparisons between the landscape and the 
background, much to Ingersoll's advantage. There's 
nothing small, apparently, about Robert. He's got a 
wide smile, and a spreading girth, and generous legs, 
and plenty of reach, and a cracking big head ! 

And he bids for popularity among women. He doesn't 

say that cold feet should be grounds for separation 

between man and wife, but he does say that no woman 

should live with a cross man ; and I v/as glad of it, for I 

15 



226 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

thought of my chum, who is half distracted, twenty-five 
hours of the day, about a man who is so supremely selfish, 
that to read her death in the Herald wouldn't move him 
half as much as to find the soup he wanted wasn't on the 
menu of his club. 

Why, that woman has lived days without one word 
from him, and nights as utterly forsaken and alone as if 
she'd been on an uninhabited island. She's been snubbed 
and pulled up, when she's been distancing him on the 
first quarter. She's known months to pass, and the only 
evidence of affection he gave was by kissing her lady 
friends. She could have put a blister on a polar bear's 
tail, and found him a pleasanter companion thereafter 
than this husband was, for whom she was putting out 
every ability and making every effort. She was there 
Sunday night, and when Ingersoll opened out on the 
cross husbands, I was pleased ; for she doesn't take any 
counsel from me. Perhaps the applause that greeted 
the sentiment conveyed to her some conviction of its 
truth. 



FRAGMENTS. 



Time brings nothing but decay to us ; and I think it 
the happier fate to drop off the bough with one fatal 
touch of blight, than linger to come quashing down an 
unsightly mass of corruption. The good, commonplace 
woman, who has had in her youth neither beauty nor 
ability, who has passed through girlhood and middle 
age without excitement or success, may enjoy all the 
discomforts of old age. But for women like Adelaide 
Neilson or Selina Dolaro — it seems to me they should 
fittingly sweep down the breeze, like brilliant autumn 
leaves, passing from view in all the splendor of crimson 
and gold, rather than survive the blasts of winter, to be 
pushed off in their brown and withered state by the pesky 
little buds of spring. 

$ £ $ 4* * # 

I think there is a great mistake about this business of 
death. You take twelve dead and twelve living faces, 
and study their expressions. You will find anxiety, sor- 
row, discontent, and pain stamped in more or less distinct 
lines on the living faces. You will find the seal of settled 
peace — and a knowing look, if not almost a smile — on 
every one of those marble masks. I always turn from 
the contemplation of the dead with a firm conviction 
that it is by no means the worst that ever happened to 
'em. And it's a blessed poor result of the Christian 
religion, that everybody is afraid to die, and that when 
death is threatened to any one, the moralists must draw 
hair-standing comparisons between the past glory of the 
victim, and impending destruction. 



228 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

As for the atheism and unbelief of the age, it's a very 
sad thing. There's a certain religion of Nature, that 
dwells in every intelligent soul, irrespective of forms and 
creeds. We all feel that our surest hold on any good 
hereafter, is the amount of good we can accomplish on 
this earth. We all feel that if an insensate turnip pos- 
sesses a reproductive power that will enable it to turn up 
green and lively after being planted, we should be equal 
in ability to that merry little vegetable ; that some way, 
somewhere, and somehow, we will "see you later." The 
loving, faithful, pure, and charitable human heart has no 
need to buy of speculators outside, when it gets to the 
ticket-taker called Peter. There are complimentaries 
issued to such as these : " And of such is the kingdom 

of Heaven ! " 

****** 

No ! I maintain that the loss of a little child is the 
one loss that years never obliterate. The man's strong 
hand that has made mother's path smooth ; the woman's 
loving hand that has lain on mother's tired head ; 
Johnny's big voice that whooped it up after school, and 
Jimmy's coaxing tones that beguiled you of every new 
trinket, can leave you desolate for a time ; but the one 
great, fresh sorrow — the one open grave — is that made 
by the baby ! The clinging clasp of that aimless hand, 
the tiny voice that shapes but one small word, is the one 
that can reach across all dividing time, and ring in your 
ears till the day of your death. The human heart 
recovers from all other losses ; but let an empty cradle 
once extinguish the light in a parent's life, and there is 
no power that can re-kindle the flame again ! 

There's a great deal of fuss made by most people in 
getting ready to die. They have to be groomed by 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 229 

ministers; they have to undergo a sort of ante-mortem 
embalming ; they are stuffed full of good things; as much 
of the original sin as the theological massage can take 
out of 'em is taken; they put their thoughts on the ele- 
vated roads, and get as much of their baggage checked 
as their ticket will allow. But, believe me, that eye is the 
steadiest, that heart the calmest, that soul the bravest, 
that belongs to the man or woman who can see the gates 
of the tomb, beyond some gates they have builded for 
sheltering age or fostering youth. The knell of death 
will be robbed of its terror if glad bells they have set 
ringing mingle their music with the solemn clang of eter- 
nity. Set aside enough money to bury you decently, O ye 
millionaires ! and then invest every cursed dollar you 
have, before you die, in alleviating the misery this world 
is full of ! 

I believe Peter Cooper is taking more comfort where 
he is to-day than any other millionaire who ever died in 
New York. As one after another has joined him, that 
philanthropic old patriot has asked what they did for the 
education, protection, and nourishment of the young, the 
defenceless, and the needy, before they came away. And 
when each one answered, " Nothing ! " he must have 
thought of his Institute, his Free Art Union, and his poor 
man's Reading-room, with genuine satisfaction. Almost 
every one lives as if there were no hereafter. The stiff est 
Christians in the pot seem to believe that they will never 
know anything more of this world after they leave it; 
otherwise they would fix up the landscape, so that it 
would be pleasant to contemplate from their bird's-eye 
bulge on us. 

* * * # * * 

The struggle of man's intellect with the problem of 



230 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

immortality is always interesting ; though the usual view 
of heaven is not wholly satisfactory to a rational human 
being. That beyond the far, mysterious stars there is an 
abiding place for the reasoning faculties and affections 
we possess here, every one hopes; and certainly, if our 
condition hereafter depends upon our conduct just now, 
it must be that ministering to our fellow-creatures, doing 
good to man and woman, is the only way to get a lien on 
the mansion not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
Appoint for every man an hour to die, and see to what 
use he would put the intervening time. You would not 
find him in Wall Street, attending to the stock market. 
With a dim instinct that he was making himself solid, he 
would be hurrying up his ante-mortem record of charity 
and good works. And so, if this legend should be hung 
out upon the sky — " This property on easy terms; be 
charitable, and move in," earth would be heaven, and 
sin and sorrow would pass away. 

*j» H» H» tt t» H» 

Time doesn't handle a man with a thicker pair of 
gloves than he puts on for a woman ; but just tell a man 
at fifty or sixty that he isn't in the ring, and an enticing 
and inspiring spectacle — and you'll hear a verdict, and get 
an opinion as is an opinion. It's as I have often said to 
you: Pull every feather off a man's dear head ; yank 
every tooth out of a sweet, dear man's mouth ; furrow 
him an inch deep with Time's claw ; rheumatize his 
joints ; raise Cain with him generally, and he sits up 
and shows his necktie, and think's he's a darling that 
ought to paralyze every woman! 

# # * # # # 

Oh, airs ! insufferable airs ! If people only knew how 
small an impression they make, I believe they would be 
left at home with account-books, and pill-boxes, and sick 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 231 

cats, and other disagreeable things. Oh, airs, airs ! pride 
of place and pride of person ! Of what small account 
are all the pompous people who chipper and flirt their 
feathers in the public eye ! If we can only hang on to 
this dirt-pile long enough, we shall see the gloomy earth- 
worm sunning himself on the proud head, so full of airs 
to-day; and a colony of scheming ants carrying out their 
tiny plans along that breast that to-night is smiling 
with self-importance. If we don't possess the necessary 
gravitation, then the airy one will superciliously read our 
grave-stone, and say: " Really ? dear me — dead! But 
what could you expect of such a person ?" 

$ * ♦ 4* * * 

Good God ! I want human hands about me, even after 
I am dead. 

One day, for me the sturdy spade 
Shall ply its trade ; 

One day its mate, the shovel, shall perform its task. 
And when those first, last friends of man have made 
The narrow bed in which my form is laid — 

O Mother Earth ! one boon of thee I ask : 
Send up from out my breast some lovely flowers 

Whose far-pervading perfume shall allure, 
And in the bondage of those dreadful hours 

The blessed touch of human hands secure ! 

After all, we grow old from the inside. It's the oil of 
an occupied mind that lights the old lamp of life. It's 
the loving, sacrificing, busy heart, forgetting self, that is 
forgotten by Time. 

jfc ■& j{c sH ♦ *H 

If beyond this heartache and headache we call living 
there is any reward for the dwellers on earth, the crown 
must rest on that golden head that never conceived an 



232 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

evil thing ; the palm must reach that gentle, generous 
hand that was helpful and open to all. 

There is an instinct in every human heart that there is 
something beyond. There's not a tribe upon the earth 
but cherishes a belief that this life leads up to something 
better, from the Persian, with his eternally beautiful houris 
peopling the Mohammedan heaven, to the woman Down 
East, who knew paradise was passed in a rocking-chair 
without even knitting work to do ! 

w w w w w w 

I hold many anniversaries of death, if I cannot escape 
remembering them, at home. I never want to look upon 
a picture of my lost ones. There is no panacea for the 
grave but f orgetf ulness. It is a blessed provision that we 
eternally forget its inevitable call upon ourselves; and 
the only comfort time brings is its power to efface 
remembrance of its former visits. 

W W vT 'TT W W 

The Gusher, on this Christmas eve, with a reminiscent 
hand under a retrospective head, thinks of all the kindly, 
loving words she has heard from the professional peo- 
ple she likes so much during the year just past, and 
smiles; looks out beyond the majestic arches of the 
magnificent High Bridge, that bends its benignant stone 
battlements above her windows, upon a slender yellow 
road that, like a sallow finger, points away to a grave in 
Mount Vernon, where lies the fondest female heart that 
ceased to beat in all the long year — and bows her head 
and weeps. But, smiling or sighing or crying, she extends 
both hands to those she loves and to those who love her, 
to those she has loved and to those who never will love 
her, and says, at this season when good will reigns — 
" May every joy come to you and with you abide ! " 
* * * * * * 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 233 

If there's anything on earth I love it's the dawn of a 
new day. The long, far-singing noises of the night stop. 
The ashen-gray colors stand. When, low along the hori- 
zon, appears a streak of light — rosy, golden, beautiful — 
each instant it intensifies. Clouds may come ; a tempest 
may close in with the darkness of the night; but the birth 
of a new day in its sudden glory is a promise of joy, a 
setting of Hope's bow in the heaven of the heart; and over 
the sweet, soft, helpless head of a new-born child I bow 
in adoration. Mystery, possibility — the whence and the 
where. The waxen calla leaf of a stainless life begun, 
on which joy or sorrow must begin its history, is to me 
a wonder — a wondrous wonder. 

* * * * * * 

There's no doubt Nature knows her business. It's as 
well to let the dame alone and ask no questions. If we 
are all here another Christmastide we shall be glad ; and 
if we are not here, I earnestly hope we shall still be glad. 



"TIGER LILY'S" RACE. 
From the Play of "Philip Heme:' Act I* 



Mrs. Herne. 
( To Philip^ Where have you been all these years ? 

Philip. 

Well, it's a long story, mother ; but this much you 
shall hear at once. You remember Viscaronda, the 
Spanish ranchman, whose son was in college with me ? 
Well, we both cut away to his father's place in Califor- 
nia. I've been with horses till I'm a sort of Centaur. 
He's brought a stable of " flyers " East for the fall meet- 
ings, and I'm the crack rider from the Golden Gate. 

Mrs. Herne. 

Oh, my son ! and I had such hopes for your future ! 
A jockey ! How came you to embrace such a life ? 

Philip. 

Accident, mother ! Accident, that shapes a man's 
fate when education, influence, and endeavor are put 
forth in vain. Viscaronda's a charming fellow, and his 
heart was set on seeing the success of his pet racer 
" Altamont " on the Oakland track, last fall a year. We 
came down from the ranch with quite a stable. There 

* Published by permission of J. M. Hill, Esq. 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 235 

was "Altamont," his half-brother " Raoul," " Dundee 
Kate," " Estelle," and half-a-dozen more — all flyers — 
and in the party the " Tiger Lily." Now the " Lily " had 
once been the pride of the Pacific Slope ; but for several 
seasons she'd just eaten her head off, living in clover, 
as the mate of " Estelle." They loved each other so 
well, that each pined during a separation, so Viscaronda 
brought the " Lily " to satisfy " Estelle." 

Mrs. Herne. 
He must be a kind-hearted man. 

Philip. 
Oh, the best in the world ! Well, the very day before 
the opening of the meeting, " Altamont " broke down. 
I always shall believe he was tampered with, for he had 
a walk-over with the entries. Viscaronda was incon- 
solable. No one of all his stud could fill " Altamont's" 
place, and in his grief he burst out : " The scoundrels ! 
they've beaten me ! Oh, if ( Kate ' were only the ' Tiger 
Lily' that she once was, I'd substitute her for 'Alta- 
mont,' and yet redeem the ranch ! " Now for months I 
had given the " Lily " a daily brush on the circle, and 
there had been times when, with a little crowding, she 
had let out with a burst of her old speed that was elec- 
trical. We understood each other. That's a great thing 
for a horse and rider. She'd come to know the touch of 
my hand, the sound of my voice. She answered the 
pressure of my knee, and was as much company to me 
as a human being. I went and looked the " Lily " over. 
Glossy, sleek, light-limbed and alert, in her gentle eyes 
shone a ray of something that might have been recollec- 
tion ; but I tried to believe that the fire still burned, 
though under ashes ; so I just explained things to her. 



236 the giddy gusher papers. 

Mrs. Herne. 
Explain things to a horse ? 

Florrie. 

Oh, yes ; it's always best ! I have to reason with 
" Rover " every day. 

Philip. 

You're right, my darling. And so I told the " Lily " 
the strait her master was in. I dwelt upon the necessity 
of overcoming the infirmities of age for one brief hour, 
and I showed her how, in that hour, she could cover 
herself with glory, confuse the conspirators who were 
" downing " her master, and win my heart entirely. 
Well, I don't know which argument won. 

Florrie. 
I do ! She wanted your heart. 

Philip. 

Perhaps. Anyway, I left her, feeling the tingle of 
success from my fingers to my feet. I went to Visca- 
ronda and said : " Put the ' Lily ' in < Altamont's ' place, 
and leave the rest to me ! " 

Mrs. Herne. 

You enthusiastic boy ! And did you win him to your 
way of thinking ? 

Philip. 

Did I ? Well, I guess I did ! I compelled belief in 
that dear old deposed queen of the turf. Oh, you should . 
have heard the sneers that followed the announcement 
that Viscaronda had substituted the " Tiger Lily " of the 



THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 237 

past, for the horse they were all afraid of, and that his 
rider was an unknown ! " Altamont's " rider was a Mex- 
ican ; he thought, with the rest, that the failure of the 
star horse had rattled the old man who believed in your 
boy. Under cover of the night, I gave my pet a lesson 
or two, and then the morning broke that was to make or 
mar me as a prophet — a day as perfect as a pearl. Oh, 
mother, a California day is a poem in the air ! You 
hear music ; you breathe fragrance ! You seem set to a 
tune that is played by your heart ! I had another talk 
with my lady " Lily," and even as we came up for the 
flag, in front of the grand stand, there was something in 
us both that turned the tide. Oh, mother, that was a 
race ! Five were in it, but four were followers. On the 
home stretch of the first heat, we took the lead and kept 
it. " Good ! " shrieked the crowd, as they saw the time ; 
" but she can't keep it up ! she can't repeat ! " Now, 
a triumph that is unexpected always wakes more enthu- 
siasm than a foregone conclusion. There were twenty 
thousand people on that track, and they went wild over 
a miracle. They stormed the shed to compliment me 
and gaze at the mare ; but I took my girl aside for further 
confidences. We were going in for the deciding heat — it 
was a heat-race — and everything was yet at stake. I 
clasped my arms about her neck, and put my face to 
hers. We promised each other the world if we won. 
I flung myself upon her back, and, in perfect accord, 
determined and invincible, we faced the music ! Oh, 
mother ! there was one moment, when " Pioneer," an 
iron-gray horse of great speed, stole up. I glanced at 
the side, where the green growing things and the planted 
posts had been flying by like the teeth of a comb — there 
was a gleam of gray and a flash of red — " Pioneer " and 
his rider's crimson jacket ! My tightened grasp, my 



238 THE GIDDY GUSHER PAPERS. 

warning knee, conveyed the news of danger to my 
darling. Her beautiful little head stiffened, the delicate 
pink nostrils swelled — with a snort of defiance she let 
out. I was astride the wind ! The scent of a hay-rick 
at the quarter-pole, and the " Ess. Bouquet " of the grand 
stand, struck me full in the face at one time. Fainter 
and fainter fell the castanets of " Pioneer's " feet, as he 
was left behind. Alone, victorious, bursting with joy, 
the " Tiger Lily " and I swept under the wire ! And 
before I returned, to be made a hero of, I stooped my 
head, and the falling tears on her glossy neck, and the 
whispered words in her waiting ear, were sweeter to the 
dear old mare and me than all the tumult that followed ! 






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